Ethnic vote
I am a researcher in Arabic and teach Arab history at Deakin University's Toorak campus. Your sympathetic attitudes on Afro-Asian causes are building up an increasing readership for GL among Arab Australians, who combine political radicalism with an interest in holistic non-western traditional medicine and other alternative technologies in a way close to GL's concerns.
Your Sydney readers in particular, though, may not be aware of the resistance and anger aroused against Labor among Lebanese Australians and Arab-Australian voters in the Wills electorate by its moves to phase out or abolish one of the mainstream Australian institutions that has offered crucial services to help Arabic-speaking immigrants integrate. The ALP governments of Hawke and Keating have repeatedly refused to renew the funding allocation for the NOW centre in Brunswick.
The NOW centre has an outstanding record of meeting the social and cultural needs of the people of Brunswick and in particular, Lebanese, Assyrian-Christian, Arab and Turkish immigrants. Its services have been indispensable in helping refugees from war-torn Lebanon get through their initial settling-in period. The NOW Centre has special, well-qualified and concerned Lebanese staff so the immigrants can communicate their detailed needs clearly in their native Arabic.
The NOW's welfare programs, which target youth, elderly and women have prepared Lebanese migrants to integrate themselves and become self-supporting. In my recent visits to the Brunswick area I have heard lots of outbursts of dissatisfaction in Arabic from residents at the threatened closure of the NOW Centre that has served them so well. They joined hands with the Italian, Greek, Yugoslav and Maltese Australians and the unemployed in Wills to boot out an ALP that had been denying them vital resources.
The ethnocentric mainstream media has tried to downplay the ethnic dimensions in Labor's rout in the Will's by-election, but it was a crucial facet that Liberal and Labor politicians are denying today at their own peril.
In assessing Keating's administration, ethnic Australian groups will have to monitor — and resist as a bloc — any attempts to cut allocation of resources to non-Anglo Australians but support him if his administration is fair and balanced with resources. The support won by the left environmentalist Phil Cleary in his victorious campaign at Wills, though, may signal the beginning of a more radical shift in Arab-Australian and other ethnic voting patterns that conceivably could take them well out of the traditional two-party political system altogether.
Denis Walker
Balaclava
[Edited for length.]
AIDEX and ISO
Judging by the heat generated in GLW, I suspect that Douglas Adams' "Deep Thought" computer would have found it a doddle trying to fathom the meaning of Life, The Universe and Everything compared to the Byzantine complexities of AIDEX, the ISO and everything about the theory and practice of radical social
The ISO has been painted as a menace to the Left because of an unreconstructed Stalinism (undemocratically imposing its "line" onto protest movements) or as an ultra-leftist bunch of hooligans trying to raise political consciousness through the crack of police batons on protesters' heads.
Some on the Left are guilty of this. But not the ISO (I write as a former member). What appears to motivate the charge against the ISO is a fundamental disagreement with the ISO's basic politics of mass militant direct action guided by a class approach that keeps the ideological influence of vicars and pro-capitalist Democrats on the fringe of the working class, students and oppressed in struggle.
Much was made, for example, of the ISO's alleged zeal for confrontation with the police at AIDEX. At AIDEX, I saw some goading of police — by some politically immature ideological anti-authoritarians and, probably, some ASIO provocateurs. But to say that this minuscule number of protesters provoked the pacifist police onto their orgy of violence is like saying that the invasion of Kuwait by Iraq so offended peace-loving US imperialism that its bombers just had to go in and lay waste to the human and natural landscape of Iraq.
To allege that this provocation was ISO-inspired, and that the recent education demonstrations where the police also showed their true political colours as defenders of property and privilege, is old fashioned red-baiting, the manufacture of horror stories to attack one's political opponents.
The ISO's politics is not a warm and fuzzy politics but militant mass action against AIDEX has forced the bomb lovers out of Canberra and under the cover of friendly security door salespersons.
Some see a deliberate campaign to deny the ISO access to GL. This is overstating the case. What is really at stake is the age-old debate between revolution and reform, between effective intervention and impotent "bearing witness". On this count, the ISO has got it more right than anyone else.
Phil Shannon
Canberra
Student demos
Unfortunately the letter signed by members of the Sydney University SRC Education Department (GL April 29) criticising Jorge Jorquera's analysis of the March 26 student demos (GL April 9) relies more on distortions and name-calling than a discussion of the two main political points raised, which are worth reiterating.
Firstly, it's true that Left Alliance officers initiated the campaign and that lefties built it (including Resistance on many campuses nationally, contrary to the letter's slanderous claim). But this positive step was not fully exploited because of a large error made by some leftists, principally Left Alliance and the ISO, in insisting on the narrow focus of the loans scheme. This allowed an easy government backdown and limited the politics and the numbers mobilised, presumably because this focus was acceptable to the pro-ALP forces in NUS.
Secondly, if the letter defines militancy (when referring to inority unilaterally attempting to lead a shove into a heavily defended DEET building, or as 15 people out of a much reduced demo temporarily running around inside the ALP office, we'd have to disagree. We'd call it ultraleftism, the idea that the "militancy" of a "militant minority" of super-revolutionaries can substitute for a mass movement or somehow spontaneously inspire one into existence.
Resistance and many others, including the signatories to this letter, would love to see a broad, active mass movement for free education. This is the precondition for real militancy, and for fighting for a democratic NUS. But concessions to the right, silly antics and juvenile name-calling won't bring this about.
Michael Tardif, Alex Aitkin, Stephen Bavaro, Zyra McAuliffe, Caroline Burke, Kath Gelber, Elle Morrell, Samantha Lazzaro, Louisa Foley, Nick Fredman, Julia Perkins
Sydney Uni, Macquarie Uni, Uni of NSW
'Militant minority'
In reply to the letter by Sydney University activists (GLW #53): Yes, I was at the Sydney demonstration on March 26. I did not say that four motions had been moved at the Sydney demonstration. This remark referred to the Melbourne protest.
At the Sydney protest, after speakers at the Austudy building, a number of ISO members started to shove towards the police cordon blocking the entrance. After protest from various students in the crowd (including Left Alliance members), the ISO members finally handed over the megaphone for others to be allowed a word.
One student suggested marching to Belmore park. ISO members continued to push towards the police lines. The bulk of the rally was not interested in either alternative; most students started to leave.
Only then did one ISO member get up and suggest that the rally march to the ALP offices. This proceeded, with no more than 80 students arriving at ALP offices. There, ISO members went straight to the front of the demonstration, and immediately proceeded to push up against the police line. A number of their members also yelled abuse at those who did not follow.
This way the ISO achieved their objective — to "isolate the militant minority". The goal, which they have repeatedly enunciated, invariably means engaging in confrontations with the cops, regardless of the political issues concerned. This only cuts across building campaigns and movements.
A mass and militant education campaign will, in the first place, be built on the basis of demands for free education, etc., and not on demands focused on the police. Confronting the police before substantial numbers of students have been drawn into the campaign can only lead to "isolating" a small number of students from the vast majority.
How have the March 26 demonstrations "given momentum to the education campaign"? As I stated in my comment, meetings of campus and cross-campus committees haven't exactly exploded with student participation.
The Melbourne demonstration was not the "most militant mass e Vietnam". Even without considering the BLF protests, the '80s peace rallies and the Gulf war demonstrations, the student rallies of '89 were five times bigger and extremely militant. Last year alone, some 5000 RMIT students marched through the streets of Melbourne.
NUS calling this National Day of Action does not make it more militant, as you suggest. It only reflects the fact that the government and NUS realise the amount of student frustration and anger that has been building up. NUS's willingness to do something is no different to the ACTU's token "Jobs and Justice" campaign.
Yes, students are angry, but this has not yet begun to crystallise in sustained activity. It could, but NUS and the antics of ultralefts like the ISO will not help. Only actions oriented to drawing in large numbers of students, i.e., peaceful mass protests (which the Sydney Uni activists seem to regard with disdain) will build the education campaign.
Jorge Jorquera
Dulwich Hill NSW
US death penalty
Information provided by the US National Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty shows that more than 75% of the 2,500 prisoners on US death row were financially unable to hire an attorney to represent them at trial. In USA today it is only the poor who are executed. This is not justice.
Stephen Langford
Paddington NSW
Harris execution
Factors surrounding executions in USA are often not fully presented in the Australian media. I quote information received from Amnesty International USA concerning the case of Robert Alton Harris who was executed in California's gas chamber last week.
"We are deeply concerned by the enormous amount of mitigating evidence in Mr Harris's case, for example that: both of his parents were alcoholics and that there is evidence his mother drank heavily while pregnant; he was frequently and severely beaten by both his father and stepfather; he sniffed glue and other substances from the age of 9, and was abandoned by his mother at age 14, and at age 15 was diagnosed as schizophrenic and suicidal; tests show him to have suffered frontal lobe damage of a type likely to impair his abilities of reasoning and self-control. We are particularly concerned that this evidence was not fully presented to the jury in this case."
Stephanie Wilkinson
Seven Hills NSW
Mad with greed
The intention of Mt Isa Mines to mine the McArthur River silver-lead-zinc deposits is another example of mankind gone mad with greed.
There is no intention whatsoever to use this Australian resource for the benefit of Australians. It will all be exported for the benefit of some other country. In fact, Australia is a net exporter of almost all metals and their ores.
Our rewards will be the heavy metal poisoning of the McArthur River mouth and the adjacent parts of the Gulf of Carpentaria, with the possible contamination of the local barramundi and prawn catches and the loss of those export markets. We have already seen how a mine as small as Woodcutters has caused heavy metal pollution in the Darwin Harbour adjacent to the bulk-loading facilities at Fort Hill.
To compound this felony — and it is a crime against the environment — there have been calls from some less responsible politicians for the ore to be treated before export. The legacy of children brain-damaged by lead poisoning at Port Pirie and Broken Hill has already been forgotten or ignored, apparently.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
Blame the poor
If one looks at the development of capitalism in countries like the US, Britain and Australia the social component, which hardly exists in the US, is being steadily eroded. Even after this recession is over unemployment rates of around 8% will remain and once rates touch 7.5% the next recession is around the corner. Meanwhile, propaganda campaigns persuade people that low inflation is of paramount importance and that anything below 10% unemployment is acceptable. The poor get the blame: wages and conditions are being whittled away with companies threatening to move to developing countries where wages are kept low perpetuating the poverty trap.
With a recession every 7 years or less the pressure on unions will be enormous. Thus the scenario of a permanent underclass comprising 25-30% of the population, with unions banned and wages controlled by employers and increasingly linked to overseas conditions and last not least ruthless exploitation of what is left of the environment with the upper classes living in safe indoor cities, is entirely realistic. Bipartisan agreements on aspects of such a policy exist already and the newspaper barons would give their warmest approval.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Rapid Creek NT