Share ownership
Alison Dellit (GLW #474) is correct to highlight Mark Latham's proposal to subsidise first share purchases.
Latham's scheme would be available to people on twice the median taxable income and, unless regulations prevented it, could be exploited by people claiming their share bonus and then cashing in their shares. The maximum subsidy would only be $300 worth of shares.
This plan would make virtually no difference to the overall distribution of private capital. Achieving that would require heavily taxing the rich to fund share accounts for all lower-income people.
But the goal should be socialism — not less inegalitarian capitalism.
People focused on amassing private stockholdings are likely to become more self-centred and less community-minded. Some shares perform much better than others, creating inequities. People with modest shareholdings can — mistakenly — believe that capitalism is in their best interests even though it favours real capitalists over workers, social security recipients and animals.
We need nationalisations, not a minor, and ideologically dodgy, first-share-owner handout. Less-well-off people will always be primarily reliant on government spending on welfare, health, education, transport, infrastructure, etc. — not on private property income.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
New era
We have now entered a new era, along with the rest of the world. We are witnessing civil liberties being downgraded in Canada, Europe, USA, UK, New Zealand and Australia, with more powerful security legislation for the various intelligence agencies' spooks. How many know of the proposals for more powers for our own ASIO by John Howard and his attorney general, where details are still sketchy? But with recent scares such as the Affroz/Moorabbin pilot flight training school affair, can we also afford to be too complacent?
What is the right mix of restrictions and freedoms? How much should we give up? Do we see images of debates on freedoms and thought control emerge from the past? As expressed in George Orwell's books Animal Farm and 1984, or Arthur Miller's play The Crucible or popular 1970s movies like Logan's Run, Three Days of the Condor and Apocalypse Now?
How should we approach this new era where there are hard choices of balancing individual rights against our mutual responsibilities to our fellow citizens? Hasn't that always been the great divide between open societies and totalitarian regimes, whether of the right or the left? But where are we now? Witness the controversial attempts to interrogate all young males of Middle Eastern origin in the USA as possible terrorists. Witness the furore when 15-year-old Katie Sierra was expelled from high school in the USA recently for wearing an anti-war T-shirt. Isn't this going overboard? Aren't there less draconian ways to respond to a young thinking teenager?
Astonishingly, in the UK, the new security legislation proposals proved too extreme even for the House of Lords, which rejected them seven times! Shouldn't we heed the views expressed recently in the UK Observer, that "in a struggle that is coloured by a degree of social panic, we must be very careful not to allow human rights to be cast away as an indulgence"?
Kerrie Christian
Wollongong [Abridged]
Afghanistan
In the final article of his series on the history of Afghanistan (GLW #475), I believe that Norm Dixon is mistaken about the background of General Abdul Rashid Dostum.
Dixon says that Dostum was a mujahideen guerilla commander, the leader of a "rebel army" fighting against the leftist Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan government, who had reached an agreement with the PDPA by 1988, then turned against the government again in 1992.
In fact, Dostum was a general in the government army who rebelled in 1992.
Ahmed Rashid, in his book Taliban: the Story of the Afghan Warlords (Pan, 2001), says (page 56) that Dostum joined the army in 1978, the year of the revolution that brought the PDPA to power. "He rose through the ranks to become the commander of the armoured corps that defended the Soviet supply line into Afghanistan from Hairatan port on the Amu Darya river. After the Soviet departure in 1989, Dostum led a ferocious Uzbek militia force called Jowzjan, named after their province of origin, which was used by President Najibullah as the regime's stormtroopers against the mujaheddin. The Jowzjanis fought all over Afghanistan, often being flown in as a last resort to prevent a government garrison being overrun.
"In 1992, Dostum was the first to rebel against his mentor Najibullah, thereby establishing his reputation for treachery and political opportunism. The hard-drinking Dostum then became a 'good Muslim'. Since then he had, at one time or another, allied himself with everyone — Masud, Hikmetyar, the Taliban, Masud again — and betrayed everyone with undisguised aplomb. He had also been on every country's payroll, receiving funds from Russia, Uzbekistan, Iran, Pakistan and lately Turkey".
A factor that contributed to Dostum's betrayal of the PDPA government was the cessation of Soviet aid, which meant that the government had difficulty paying its troops. In this situation, the large amounts of money offered by rightist forces no doubt came to seem very attractive.
Chris Slee
Melbourne
Mbeki
In GLW #475, Richard Pithouse claims [South African President Thabo] Mbeki is supported by a "tiny group of right-wing (pseudo-scientific) Americans". He doesn't name names, but presumably he is means AIDS dissidents like Peter Duesberg. Duesberg a right-wing genocidal pseudo-scientific fanatic? Where is his evidence for this amazing allegation, or the association of AIDS dissidents with Ku Klux Klan? Duesberg is a molecular biologist.
The December 2001 issue of New African (which can hardly be accused of being anti-African) has several articles on AIDS with a pro-dissident perspective. One by English journalist Neville Hodkinson has the heading: "Years ago I went through the same experience as Mbeki". It is in support of Mbeki and the AIDS dissidents. He did not sound right wing to me. On Duesberg, he writes: "Later when he persisted in raising questions(about HIV as cause of AIDS), the scientific mainstream did everything to silence him, cancelling research funds... and boycotting meetings he was to speak at". Pithouse is doing much the same, with his allegations.
John Nebauer, in his review of Tolkein's Lord of the Rings in GLW #475, claims that "production for social need would give rise to environmentally friendly production". So heavy industry doesn't cause pollution: CEO's do! This sounds like a Marxist superstition. Hasn't Nebauer heard of Chernobyl or the fate of the Aral Sea? How would a scientific socialist deal with toxic industrial waste? Capitalism is not the only evil. Tolkien is right: industrial science is fundamentally toxic.
Brian Souter
Lyons ACT
Refugees
I write as a follow-up to an advertisement recently shown on Channel 9 concerning the plight of the refugees. I feel truly ashamed of Australia, for the first time in my life. The majority of Australians have accepted the fear campaign amounting to xenophobia that was run so successfully by the Liberal Party in the election. And the Labor Party preferred to hop onto the same bandwagon rather than to take a moral stand, so they lost their honour as well as the election.
Where has our once compassionate society gone? Can we yet retrieve the situation, and our reputation in the world? I hope that the "Faces in the Crowd" advertisement may have made a few more people start to think about the matter from a different perspective. We must learn again to "hold up one hand against fear, and extend the other in compassion".
Eleanor Dilley
Vermont South Vic
Asylum seekers
The thing that most upsets me about the Howard government's treatment of asylum seekers attempting to reach our newly arranged borders in leaky vessels, is the total and unremitting lack of compassion shown to them. When I'm trying to understand another persons differing point of view, I place myself in their shoes. I know how I've arrive at my point of view, so I seek an opposite to place my view into context.
I try to imagine what Howard, Ruddock and supporters of the fatally flawed "Pacific solution" think when they see footage of people drowning and over-crowded boats: Greedy queue-jumpers? Of people holding children over the edge of a boat: Political opportunism? Brutal savages? Of children staring, unknowing through wire fences: Welfare burdens? Children of greedy queue-jumpers? I have tried but I cannot understand.
Rebecca McCoy From Green Left Weekly, January 16, 2002.
Windsor Vic [Abridged]
Visit the Green Left Weekly home page.