Message of support
[The following message was sent to the Green Left launch in Melbourne on March 2.]
Like most political activists, I have long lamented the lack of a good, solid left-based publication here in Australia tackling the important issues of the day. As some of you may know, over the past 12 years I have published my own newsletter Hard Facts for Hard Times, to put our alternative information and analysis.
Most of us have become disenchanted — to say the least — with mainstream politics and increasingly people are turning to groups outside the system to represent them. It seems sensible, with the many overlaps between the left and the greens, that there should be some sort of collaboration on this level and I'm pleased to note that the first issue of the Green Left Weekly marries the two quite effectively. It does this too, without limiting itself to the usually accepted notions of what should be red/green issues.
The first year is always the most difficult. Of course, there's nothing more concrete than financial assistance, and you can be assured that my subscription will be forthcoming.
Good luck.
Joan Coxsedge, MP
Melbourne West Province
Too much of Rupert
I am pleased to be a Green Left sponsor. As a media analyst I am delighted to support a paper which aims to give people informative articles with thorough and thought provoking critical analysis.
I live in a state whose daily mass media is two Murdoch papers (the Advertiser and the News); even our local suburban paper (the Messenger) is another Rupert rag.
In order to struggle for change against the dominant ideology, with all its cultural and mythic strands, there must be access to discourses that can help us in critical deconstruction and empowerment. We need spaces to ask our questions, set our agendas; places where we can argue and debate issues that are vitally important to us. Then, we can think, decide and take action.
Particularly now we need to feel the strength of solidarity across a range of struggles. We need to work together. We need to support each other. I hope your paper will help us and will provide us with a much needed respite from the pap.
The struggle continues.
Yours in solidarity,
Maggie Emmett
Adelaide
The Gulf War
Over 1000 years ago, Christian Europe fought Muslims for the control and possession of Jerusalem, in what became known as "the crusades". They were called "holy wars", but they involved centuries of bloodshed. The war in the gulf has also been termed a "holy war". Holy spirits are invoked on both sides to lend dignity to barbarism.
It is well known that Bob Hawke read a biography of Winston Churchill before the Gulf War started and this helped persuade him that Saddam Hussein must be stopped by armed force. There is also a general "current of opinion" which says that just as Hitler was a bully, so is Saddam Hussein and the only thing they both understand is brute force.
But even if they are and were "pathological men", is this the whole story or just part of it? In fact, Winston Churchill and many others warned of the growing danger of Hitler long before the war started in 1939, while the West continued to encourage, appease and applaud Hitler. Similarly people have warned of the danger of Saddam Hussein long before the Gulf War started, while the West continued to supply him with all their most deadly weapons. They actively appeased and encouraged him for decades.
Australia, for example, was supplying weapons parts to Iraq immediately prior to the war. There is no argument between "appeasement" and "armed force"; the two are different sides of the same coin and go together like the carrot and the stick. First come the carpet baggers, then the carpet bombing. There were other alternatives beyond appeasement or force but they were never given a chance. The truth is that pathological monsters like Saddam are "created" by the very same people and forces who then must destroy them. As Henry Kissinger has said, this war is more about destroying Iraq's power, than it is about "liberating Kuwait". That destruction is now being efficiently completed and in the process, the "coalition" is not only laying to rest the power of Saddam but also the ghost that has haunted America since Vietnam. They will no longer have to live with the "national psychosis" of defeat and the idea of an "unwinnable war".
But with every ghost that is slain, new ones spring up to take their place. With every national psychosis that is cured, another one begins. This is not the "mother of all battles", but the bastard child of earlier wars and the father of those to come.
Bill Blackwood
Hobart