Peter Benenson
The recent passing of Peter Benenson, founder of Amnesty International, is a sad event. In correspondence with him some years ago, I found him a far more interesting and radical person than the incarnation of AI in this country would have suggested. Those were the days, in the 1980s, when the jewel in AI Australia's crown was considered to be the Amnesty parliamentary group in Canberra. The pale, disgusting reflection of that is still with us; the Amnesty badge on Ruddock's lapel.
Countries that were in the news and had a terrible human rights record were described as "sexy" in the AIA office. The newsletter was described as a "product". I found it was easier to get a letter in the Sydney Morning Herald than our own Amnesty newsletter.
I do not know much about AI Australia at the moment. Its newsletter, Human Rights Defender, does not have a letters page for members; not a good sign. Certainly Amnesty seems to have a low public profile when it comes to the defence of refugees; and this is an issue where AI Australia can be active within Australia. And if ever refugees needed a human rights organisation to stick up for them, it is now.
Stephen Langford
Paddington NSW [Abridged]
Cuba
Having just returned from three amazing weeks in Cuba, I was absolutely delighted to read the article [in GLW #620] by Marce Cameron responding to the Good Weekend article in the SMH on February 19. I was simply a "turistica": I had a week in Havana on my own, then toured the island with a small group.
I used my (admittedly limited) Spanish to question as many people as I was able about their perceptions of life since the revolution.
I loved everything I saw and heard about Cuba's revolutionary achievements since the time of Jose Marti, through to the achievement of Batista's overthrow in 1959, and was inspired by the way Cuba has coped with the huge difficulties resulting from the collapse of the Communist bloc in Europe and the ever-increasingly harsh embargos and reprisals carried out by the US.
Cameron's article confirmed my impression of what is "so" in Cuba as distinct from the US-sponsored impression most of the world still seems to believe. My insufficient knowledge at the time prevented me from being able to counter criticisms from some of my travelling companions (entrenched in the virtues of capitalism) who clearly had no idea of the background to Cuba's current difficulties and simplistically blamed Castro.
I am currently reading Noam Chomsky's eye-opening Hegemony or Survival (should be mandatory reading for anyone who still believes in the US's "humanitarian interventions"). I am looking forward to getting hold of Richard Gott's Cuba — A New History, which promised to more fully extend my understanding of this amazing and wonderful island nation.
Thanks, yet again, to Green Left Weekly, for a voice that dares to differ.
Kerry Lawrence
Ferny Hills, Qld [Abridged]
Iraq
While traveling I'm always interested to get in touch with Marxists and so I was glad to find your newspaper. But what I read in the article on Iraq by Rohan Pearce in GLW #619 left me a little shocked. The author argues in favour of patriotism and a right for self-defence not of persons but of "nations". I thought it would be a left consensus to condemn patriotism and nationalism as a unconditional submission to the nation's agenda and instead fight for a life beyond the restraints of capital, nation and state.
Karl Liebknecht, together with Rosa Luxemburg (founder of the Communist Party in Germany), once said: "The main enemy stands in your own country." In my opinion, he should have said — is your own country. But Pearce seems not have the emancipation of the people in mind, when he sees "good patriots" at work within the Islamic "resistance" in the Iraq. Has he ever considered their political agenda and what they would do with gays and lesbians, Jews, women and communists like us? He should abolish thinking in this simple and anti-progressive scheme of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" and rather criticise Islamism as a far-right movement, which is one of the major enemies of individual freedom and autonomy.
Sebastian Bischoff
Berlin, Germany
From Green Left Weekly, April 6, 2005.
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