August 30, 1995
Issue
 is wide of the mark when he suggests that the ISO's internal turmoil can be attributed to their )
Riley is more accurate when he claims that the ISO suffers from "Cominternism". However, during the first five years of the original Comintern the "interference" of Lenin and Trotsky had the beneficial effect of steering newly formed Communist parties away from sectarian isolation.The disputes within the ISO are about the validity of the leadership's "upturn" perspective. The leadership asserted that "a major radicalisation of the working class" is taking place in Australia. It supposedly followed that the ISO had "tremendous" prospects for growth. When this expected growth did not occur, the leadership put the blame on members who had doubts about the upturn. Despite this scapegoating of members, the recent round of summary expulsions is something new for the ISO. It is almost certain that the British SWP has urged the ISO leadership to take this action.
ISO members (including myself when I was an ISO member) were not aware of the SWP's degeneration into an authoritarian and irrational sect. The SWP's advice to the ISO was evaluated as if it came from the British IS of the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the IS (it was renamed the SWP in 1977) appeared to be a fresh undogmatic force on the far Left, free from the exaggerated "vanguardism" of some Trotskyist groups, and prepared to work patiently at building rank and file groups in the Trade Unions.
Now that the damage has been done, how can ISO members be reclaimed for rational Marxist politics? Their hostility to theory makes discussion difficult; and stones thrown at "state-capitalism", from the inside of a "workers' state" glasshouse, will not help.
Roger Clarke
Carina Heights QLD
[Edited for length.]
Health care
The Victorian Government's vision for the States' health system, particularly Moe Hospital, promotes a two-tiered system of health care which is economic in inspiration and is distorted by an undue emphasis on privatisation and the profit motive.
It is not justifiable for any state government to push health care to the private sector, leaving governments to provide basic primary health care for the poor.
It appears that equal access to health care is not a basic human right. This assumption will lead to a division in communities into two classes of people: the haves for a privatised, profit-driven health care system; and the have-nots who will have to content themselves with the "public" health care section of the proposed private hospital.
Port Macquarie was the chosen site to experiment in the total privatisation of public hospitals and interrelated health services. Port Macquarie people are the guinea pigs of an American style health system. A system according to figures released by the NSW Department showing Port Macquarie's privatised hospital is costing the taxpayer 30% or $8.1 million P/A more than comparable public hospitals.
The Victorian Government is promoting an international health care system based on the privatised American model. The World Development Report points out, the US has the most inefficient health care system in the world. It has been shown in other parts of the world that health care cannot be efficiently allocated by market forces.
Don Mackay
Port Macquarie NSW
[Edited for length]
Flag burning and East Timor
"Irresponsible and uncivilised" was how the Indonesian government recently described East Timor demonstrators who burnt its national flag on August 17th, Indonesia's independence day. My heart bleeds for their hurt feelings.
This is the very same government that denied independence to East Timor by brutally invading in 1975. Since then at least 200,000 people, 1/3 of the population, have been raped, tortured, murdered or starved by Indonesian forces. Almost every family has suffered some atrocity.
Australia, despite being less than 400 miles from East Timor and in a unique position to influence Indonesia's policy, has responded disgracefully. Our government is one of the only ones to accept and recognise the illegal occupation of East Timor. The United Nations has never accepted the invasion and has repeatedly demanded the withdrawal of troops. Yet we continue to supply arms and training to those directly responsible for the slaughter (like KOSTRAD in the current Kangaroo '95 exercises).
This is despite the fact that we have a blood debt to the East Timorese. In WWII 40-70,000 of them died for supporting and defending Australian guerrillas resisting the Japanese advance towards Australia through East Timor. Australia lost just 40 men.
The East Timorese continue to resist the invaders against overwhelming odds and continue to be butchered. If you care about the slaughter of 200,000 innocent men, women and children less than 400 miles from Darwin,please phone Friends of East Timor (FOET) — (09) 361 4678. You can help by writing letters, attending our demonstrations or just by joining.
Andrew Connard
Jolimont WA
Unleaded petrol
Thank you for printing my article "Unleaded petrol: have we been told the full story?" in GLW #198, August 16. 1 hope it gives many readers some food for thought reconsidering the role of ULP in the environment debate.
There is a typographical error which misleads people completely on blood lead levels in a survey of Victorian children (figure 3, page 12).
The caption under the figure reads: "One in three children in this 1993 Victorian survey was found to have blood lead levels over the new recommended level". It should have read "Only three children in this 1993 Victorian survey ...".
Richard Giles
Noosa Heads Qld
Communists
Gerard Henderson, Sydney Morning Herald right-wing hack, commits the same "crime" as Helen Dimidarville in his "historical" articles. In an article headed "No Communists In My Heaven", he says that, because Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler, that Communists assisted Hitler, and did not fight against Nazism.
European communists, in fact, played a primary and leading role in resistance to Nazism, Fascism, Francoism, Salazarism, Metaxasism, Pavelicism, etc. In fact, one of the prime motives for the formation of the Nazi party, and other blackshirt parties, was to destroy the communist movement.
That Gerard Henderson does not know this, means that, like the judges of the Miles Franklin Award, he is not aware of the basic facts of Modern European History. Communists cannot answer these distortions, because nobody believes in them any more. It is only because Darvidenko dipped her pen in the filth of the protocols of Zion, that her lack of historicity has been uncovered.
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
VIP-Day
The Imperialist Great Britain and its ally Australia have to correct their view that only Japan was the aggressor in Asia and the Pacific.
The Imperialist Great Britain, backed up by its ally Australia colonized many countries in Asia and the Pacific where they did not belong, and exploited them.
The Imperialist Great Britain, backed up by Australia nearly conquered and colonized the whole world. So wy put only the blame on Japan?
It's time that the Imperialist Great Britain, backed up by Australia apologise to the countries they colonized, deprived and exploited through the centuries! You can imagine how happy the colonized people were when not only Japan left, but also the British and its ally Australia.
As long as the USA, Russia, Britain and France have not apologized to the countries they colonized, deprived and exploited, so long Japan has not to apologize.
Greg Katz
West End Qld
Land ownership
With land ownership a controversy in Australia, Papua New Guinea with a land ownership crisis looming, the anti-colonial movement against the French in the Pacific, and capitalists trying to force a contraction of Social Welfare, the time is long overdue for the examination of a topic that is ignored.
So much economic reformism seems to begin with the Physiocrats and Francois Quesnay's Tableau Economique. But few go behind Quesnay's vision that the land's return is the only produit net to ask, who should be — who are — the natural owners of the produit net? Perhaps the Physiocrats were only considering the produit of agriculture.
But surely all natural resources — the ore of mining, the trees, the oil — are part of the produit net. Those who espouse "the rule of law" are so committed to the limitation of land ownership rights, they will fight and kill to continue and increase those limitations. Others, like Henry George for instance, view private land ownership as stealing.
As all land and resources that are put to human use should remain in a human context, the property of all human beings, not only do indigenous people have a rightful struggle, but the payments to the needy — that are considered unearned — should be understood to be part of their rightful share of the produit net.
Richard Chiffings
Gosnells WA