Beaches for all people
Parks Victoria and the Marine Board, without consulting residents or beach users, want to ban swimming in up to half a kilometre of Seaford Beach on the Mornington Peninsula. This area is for the exclusive use of power skis to operate without normal speed restrictions, at any distance from the shore. In a similar "exclusive zone" at Werribee, a power ski ran over two children, killing one and seriously injuring another.
Seaford Beach is a perfect place for children to play as there is no great increase in depth for 100 metres out from shore, and children cannot be easily swept out into deep water; but they could be swept into an area of unregulated power ski use. The storage of fuels and refuelling of power skis on the beach also creates hazards.
The Seaford Beach for People Association want to retain Seaford and all beaches for all people, including swimmers, walkers, sightseers and legitimate watercraft users. We urgently need support for our campaign, and can be contacted on (03) 9786 1434 or at PO Box 168, Seaford 3198.
Seaford Vic
Seaford Beach for People Association
[Abridged.]
American fleet
The arrival in Australia of the American fleet calls to mind how years ago (in the 1940s) when it was here, society columns in the paper were full of notes of how well-known social figures had entertained them in and around town.
Together with friends of ours it occurred to us that it was not likely that Negro members of the American fleet would be similarly entertained.
On applying, we stated that we would be only too pleased to join the welcoming group and that coloured members would be very welcome. We and some of our friends were able to make them feel very welcome. They fortunately could get petrol tickets and we were able to show them some of Australia such as the Blue Mountains.
Balmain NSW
[Abridged.]
Cigarette ads
The Public Transport Corporation (PTC) is refusing to remove illegal cigarette advertisements from kiosks at Flinders Street station, despite 12 months of verbal and written complaints, in a classic case of bureaucratic buck-passing and incompetence worthy of Yes Minister.
When I complained about the ads in February 1996, the stationmaster agreed that they shouldn't be there. Two months later they were still there. I sent a written complaint but received no reply.
After contacting the PTC's customer service officer, I eventually received a letter from one of the PTC's solicitors. He stated that the location of the cigarette advertisements was clearly illegal under federal laws, and that this advice would be passed onto the station manager as well as to the PTC's corporate manager. Twelve months later the signs are still there.
I went back to see the customer service officer who advised me that there was no record of the original complaint on file or of the written reply. Why is the PTC refusing to uphold the law, and why the sudden attack of amnesia in the office of the corporate manager? In whose interests does the PTC act?
Phillip Barclay
Hawthorn Vic
[Abridged.]
Collins and the IRB
It is with disappointment that I read Sean Healy's article, "Michael Collins: enough myths" (GLW #263). It is important to get to the truth of what did happen during the War of Independence and the Civil War. It is not possible here to answer all the distortions in Healy's article so I'll stick to some main points. There is no doubt in my mind that the split in the Dail (parliament) and the IRA was counter-productive and doomed to fail.
Collins was not acting on his own but under the directions of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. The IRB's credo was to "make use of all instruments, political and otherwise, which were likely to aid in the attainment of a free independent republican government". The treaty was seen in this light. The "stepping-stone" tactic was IRB policy. At the same time the IRB (and Collins) were trying to obtain unity of the IRA as much as possible.
De Valera and the other anti-treaty deputies in the Dail made the fundamental error in walking out when the Dail voted for the treaty in December 1921. It not only split the army, but left the revolutionaries in the Dail (Collins and a majority of the IRB) outnumbered by the right-wing of Griffith and Cosgrove. As for Collins' role in the Civil War: once you start a war it is impossible for people not to get killed. The anti-treaty forces guaranteed a right-wing Catholic Church-dominated country when it conducted the war against the new Irish government to the bitter end.
As for the quote Healy uses: "Collins marches through Cork. Why not through Belfast." The pro and anti-treaty forces ran a combined war campaign to liberate the north during the Civil War. Politics is more complicated then what first might appear.
Melbourne
Uranium mining
The rape of Arnhem Land, in northern Australia, by a major transnational uranium mining company is about to begin. Cameco has signed agreements with the Northern Land Council to prospect for and mine uranium in the south-west of Arnhem Land. The agreements now await the approval of the Northern Territory Minister of Mines and Energy, Daryl Manzie.
This area contains the upper catchment of the Katherine river which provides the water supply for the town of Katherine and feeds into the Daly river, the only major river with a dry season base flow in the NT.
Possible effects are: contamination of water supplies downstream, including town, domestic and irrigation supplies along the Katherine and Daly rivers; pollution of fish stocks, riverine and marine; environmental degradation and erosion caused by access roads, airstrips and other facilities; and endangering numerous rock art sites by opening access to vandals and tourists.
Internationally, uranium found and mined here will go towards fuelling Indonesia's reactors, just a stone's throw from Darwin. If, at some time in the future, the government of Indonesia falls into the hands of Islamic fundamentalists it could pose a threat to the world. In the meantime the influx of energy into the Indonesian ecosystem, including the political and economic factors, will fuel population growth and energise her armament factories, enabling further military expansion, possibly to Papua New Guinea or northern Australia.
The Northern Land Council appears to be in gross dereliction of its duties. Implicit in the responsibilities of the NLC towards the indigenous people is the care of the environment. Uranium mining is definitely not environmentally friendly. The NLC appears to be driven by the fact that its funding comes largely from mining royalty equivalents. The NLC has excluded many of the traditional owners from consultations and has apparently selected a sanitised group of whom none has ever raised an objection to the nuclear industry.
Alawa NT
[Abridged.]
Open letter to the National/Liberal Party Coalition
Thank you for deciding to get the police to pick up the young and take them to shelters if they are under the age of 14, unaccompanied by their guardians and on the streets between midnight and 5am. Our organisation, the Committee for Criminalising Children, has decided to set up a reception shelter. We will be happy to take as many as young people as possible. We selected the Pinkenba site because of its isolation (barbed wire fencing won't look out of place), and the fact that the police already know where it is after a try-on with six kids from the Valley a couple of years ago.
The Committee for Criminalising Children thinks that everyone from the age of 13 to 25 unaccompanied by their guardian should be picked up by the police and brought to us. We would also be interested in privatising this pick-up service and have already had offers from the Australian Pedophile Association to provide volunteer helpers.
School of Social Science
Queensland University of Technology
[Abridged.]
Zionism
I'm not really sure why the editors of GLW felt the need to give Adam Hanieh a half-page feature space (GLW #263) to respond to my earlier brief reference to the rule of the Israeli Labor Party from 1948 to 1977 (GLW #261). It really is a bit like using a four wheel drive to mow down a troublesome mouse.
Regardless, Hanieh completely missed the point. I did not argue in my initial letter that Israel was or had ever been a socialist state. What I did point out (in response to a ludicrous suggestion that Zionism regarded anti-Semitism as a built-in-part of socialism) was that the Labor Zionist movement which ruled Israel from 1948 to 1977 identified with traditional socialist objectives.
This is hardly a contentious statement. Many of the early leaders of Israel were Russian Jewish emigres who had earlier been involved in or sympathised with the revolutionary parties of pre-Bolshevik Russia. As with most social democratic politicians, they implemented various schemes which reflected the influence of traditional socialist ideology: nationalisation of key enterprises, a large public sector, burgeoning welfare state, etc.
Nevertheless, similarly to other social democratic regimes such as the ALP and the British Labour Party, they failed miserably to create anything remotely resembling a genuinely socialist or class-free state.
Hanieh goes on to make various accusations against the state of Israel: that it expelled 750,000 Palestinians in 1948, has systemically discriminated against its Arab and oriental Jewish citizens, acts as a tool of western imperialism, and that the Kibbutz movement is not a genuinely collectivist or socialist-based enterprise. Most of these criticisms hold some truth, but few are as black and white as Hanieh suggests.
In particular, Hanieh's statement that a Jewish state must inevitably discriminate against non-Jews reflects a fundamental confusion between nationalism and racism. Israel was created as a Jewish state to provide an affirmative action refuge for Jewish victims of racism. This is why the Soviet Union and virtually the entire international left supported its creation. Israeli nationalism today is no different to Australian, Cuban or Palestinian nationalism in seeking to maintain a homogenous national, not racial, identity.
Those who adopt anti-Zionist fundamentalist positions need to ask themselves whether their support for maximalist Palestinian positions and opposition to any expression of Jewish national aspirations does not in fact constitute a form of racial discrimination.
North Caulfield Vic
[Abridged.]