Nuclear power I
No nuclear plant in the World has survived without massive taxpayer subsidies. It's not an energy solution, it's corporate welfare. John Howard's more interested in pork barrelling his wealthy mates than providing Australians with safe, renewable power.
Kim Bax
Cedar Vale, Qld
Nuclear power II
John Howard has said that a nation like Australia, with the world's largest known uranium deposits, would be "crazy in the extreme" not to allow for the development of nuclear power.
This same "logic" — doing things because we can, and because of the perceived economic benefits — has resulted in Australia having one of the highest per capita greenhouse gas emission levels due to the continued mining of coal and our voracious approach to energy consumption; a massive reduction in biodiversity and the endangering and extinction of a large number of species due to land clearing and the woodchipping of many of the last remaining areas of old growth forest, and the drying up of our mighty rivers as a result of too many dams and too much irrigation.
It would be nice to think that we could start the New Year with a commitment to thinking about the impact of our actions on the future generations of our own and other species, and start looking after the planet.
Catherine Moore
Charleys Forest, NSW
Asylum seekers
In the Weekend Australian Magazine of December 30-31, Julia Guillard is revealed as a great fan of Philip Ruddock, the former Immigration Minister, and his punitive behaviour towards asylum seekers, and refugees. As shadow immigration spokesperson, we remember the "opposition" she showed to his and Howard's policies.
I wonder if Julia Guillard, on the "left" of the Labor Party I heard, has changed her thinking on the most vulnerable and traumatised people arriving here. It would be interesting to know.
Stephen Langford
Sydney
Iraq
Once they found no weapons of mass destruction, then Saddam Hussein's death was inevitable, to prove what a tyrant he had been and to justify the American occupation of Iraq. Yet we have caused, and still cause, far more deaths in Iraq than ever he did, and the West is quite happy about supporting bloodthirsty dictatorships like Suharto's or China's or Chile's.
It is a measure of how much our leaders despise us that they do not even bother to tell us the real reason for Iraq. To grab the oil wells. Perhaps we need a few hangings in Australia too.
Peter Gilet
Albany, WA
Bushfires
A haze of smoke covered the Blue Mountains near Sydney from the bushfires 700 kilometres south, in Victoria. Before that, the Blue Mountains were on fire for 15 days.
Both fires were started by lightning strikes and both burned over bush dried out by one of the longest droughts in Australia's history. Both the drought and the dry storms that brought the lighting are results of climate change. While 2006 was recorded as one of the hottest years ever, it is predicted that 2007 will be even hotter.
Australia, along with the US, has not signed the Kyoto protocol on climate change. PM John Howard acknowledges that climate change exists, but advocates as solutions "clean coal" technology (a fantasy) and nuclear power (a nightmare). He is more concerned about the markets for Australia's coal and uranium than developing clean, renewable energy sources, such wave, wind and solar.
Another feature of the recent bushfires has been the near absence of help from the Australian Defence Force in fighting the fires. Instead, Howard has the ADF deployed in Iraq, Afghanistan and the Solomon Islands, fighting for the cause of oil and empire.
Around $7.5 million were spent on helicopters to fight the fires in the Blue Mountains alone; not one ADF helicopter was used. Nor was the air force used to transport NSW fire teams and their equipment down to Victoria to help there; they had to drive the tankers down while crews were bussed there.
Also evident in both fires was the reluctance of many experienced volunteer firefighters to step up to fight the fires. They feared not having a paid job to return to after finishing a firefighting shift, a result of the deeply anti-community character of Howard's new Work Choices laws.
The bushfires have underlined the urgent need for regime change in Canberra.
John/Togs Tognolini
Katoomba, NSW
[Abridged.]
Transsexualism
While I appreciate the efforts of my friends in the GLB community to promote the rights of people with transsexualism, the article by Rachel Evans (GLW #693) perpetuates the confusion that arises from loose terminologies.
Rachel correctly identifies the hate crimes perpetrated against those who are transgender and those who have transsexualism; she incorrectly assumes, however, that all our issues are the same.
"Transgender" is a term first coined by a married transvestite, Charles (Virginia) Prince, who found medical references to his proclivity for female clothing somewhat perjorative, and sought a less prejudicial description. Transgender now has a multitude of meanings, depending largely on the user's geographical location, and hence has become something of a nonsense term employed as a sop to political correctness in jurisdictions where "sex" is a dirty word.
"Transsexualism" was first described by Magnus Hirschfeld early last century. He was studying a group of people he initially regarded as homosexual transvestites when he realised there was a second group who not only lived as women but regarded themselves as women with absolute conviction. Hirschfeld recognised the likely biological causation of the phenomenon, describing it as a form of neurological hermaphrodism. He called it seelischer transsexualismus to distinguish it from anatomical hermaphrodism.
People with transsexualism seek both hormonal and surgical alignment of their physical sex characteristics with those of their brain. Their gender is fixed and they are happy with it; it's just the external body that needs rehabilitation. Transgender people have a fixed physical sex and a variable gender identity. The medical and physical needs of each groups are equally disparate.
Therefore, while I support increased funding to specific support entities, such as the Sydney Gender Centre, different needs have to be met in different ways and that is why Mission Australia quite reasonably decided in the particular circumstances to limit accommodation in its women's facilities to those who are women, including those who have been treated for transsexualism.
The needs of transgender people and persons with transsexualism who have not yet had surgical correction are of great importance, also, but have to be met in ways that respect the needs of others in distress as well.
Karen W. Gurney
St Andrews, Vic
[Abridged.]