ALP
Janet Burstall is dead right! (Write On, GLW, April 7). Experimenting with political possibilities outside the ALP can only lead to disaster (e.g. the drift of preferences). Socialists should accept that fact and stop dabbling in alternative projects that only waste my time debunking them.
The sooner we accept the fact that the ALP is the working class in this country the better off we'll all be. Stop this rot about green and left electoral prospects. Get real and join the workers' party.
It is Bolsheviks like us who are spreading the message — others unfortunately need to do more reading. If only more could join us we would then really be on a roll.
Roger Clarke (Write On, GLW, April 7) only gets it partly right. Regardless of what 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly comes up with, the most important first task for socialists is to elect Labor governments. Roger should follow through on that insight and help us out next polling day. (I'll ask the local branch secretary to get in touch.)
The ALP nowadays — for reasons I'm not sure of — needs all the help it can get. We therefore appreciate the support we receive from groups such as the International Socialists. It makes us Labor lefts feel so much better when comrades from outside the party cheer us on. I'm sorry that us party socialists didn't get our policies up for the federal election but you know that beating the Liberals was really the main thing.
What with Janet critically supporting the party from inside and Roger doing his bit from without, who knows what an even longer period of Labor in office will lead to. It is this promise that 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly refuses to recognise. Be critical of the party by all means but please don't do anything about it until you check with us first.
Dave Riley
Nundah QLD.
Ronald-ocracy?
Another domino has fallen!
With the blessing of Kew Council, Ronald McDonald and his merry gang from Chicago are set to bounce into once-attractive Kew. Only one Councillor, Cr Gerard Petrie, listened to the residents' wishes and said "No!" to Ronald's plastic, come-on smiles.
Do we live in a Ronald-ocracy? How can Ronald push his way through each tier of government and constantly get away with it? Appeals Tribunals mean nothing to him. Enough is enough! Surely it's time for Australians to wake up and assess the impact on our nation of the chain of McDonald's restaurants. Surely it's time we stopped being bulldozed into compliant submission to the propaganda machine.
I wish to form an organisation which exposes many of the olden Arches Machine and/or other corporations. For example, recycling is unheard of at McDonald's. Thus the pollution effect needs to be investigated. This is a national, if not international, issue.
We need to reclaim our Australian identity. Could readers please write to me.
Paul F. Tobias
107 Edgevale Rd
Kew Vic 3101
Green economy
What will the dawning of the 21st century really mean for Australia's lower classes and its environment? Our ever increasing foreign and local debt is held over us like a Damocles sword. And should any government dare targeting the rich to shoulder some of the burden our multinationals threaten to move overseas where they not only can ransack the environment at will but thanks to the perpetual system of neo-colonialistic exploitation and local corrupt regimes and interest groups, conditions (incl. youth slave "wages") are kept at a criminal level. Meanwhile in Australia the fascist bloodhounds argue that for us to stay competitive we need to dig up, cut down, drill and annihilate our environment and totally dismantle what is left of the welfare state.
Most importantly however many of those bloodhounds would not be profiting from the phasing in of a green economy. The savings made from a green energy strategy and total recycling alone would be staggering, but the opposition by the ruling classes with their propaganda monopoly over the masses prevents wholesale changes.
In this context it is also important to recognize the need to balance this planet's population growth. Even the greenest and socially most responsible policies would eventually be suffocated by an ever increasing population. What is the use of mining companies leaving Cape York alone if millions are pushing up from down south and turn the place into a concrete jungle.
Thus socialist-green policies must go hand in hand with population control. Blaming the developing countries for the population explosion is therefore nonsense because the neo-colonialistic policies of the IMF and World Bank only encourage such trends.
Michael Rose-Schwab
Gurambai NT
Open the bases!
The "joint US-Australia" facilities collect spy satellite data, some of commercial value, and provide radio contact for submarines and accurate navigation signals. They could help police the peace and disarmament. The UN (with the US and a few hangers-on dissenting or abstaining) has ordered and approved an expert report, recommending an International Satellite Monitoring Agency. It must be part of every world disarmament plan, not to mention ecological and resource use surveillance. The cost estimate is about 2% of the arms race cost, or, if the superpowers cooperate with their spy satellite systems, half that much.
Keeping the peace requires law and order. Stable peace demands popular support for the might of law, not the law of might. A f law and order needs a democratically elected world body to codify world law, world courts with mandatory powers, and world police to apprehend and penalise the individuals responsible for war.
Protests won't close the bases. Australian troops will be committed to US priorities under the guise of UN peacekeeping without consent of Australian citizens or their representatives. For final, effective action against military priorities, demand a democratic voice in making, adjudicating and enforcing world law on world law breakers, with adequate peacebuilding, conflict-resolving resources and training to prevent most violent confrontations.
To survive we must shift military spying and communications to an international cooperative project, such as proposed to the UN in 1978, and for more decades to the US, by War Control Planners, Box 19127, Washington DC 20036, USA. Open the Bases (to all the People)! To get somewhere join the fastest growing action network on Earth, GREN (Global Ratifications and Elections Network), 1480 Hoyt St, Suite 31, Lakewood CO 80215, USA.
Doug Everingham
Westlake Qld
[Edited for length.]
Standing in it
Thirty-five years ago I began my journey home, stopping off in Berlin, Istanbul, Singapore, Batuan, Frisco and Godalming on the way. In short I am as Australian as any of youse reading this, so know you share my rage at the Skippy bull dust generated by Denis Tracey and John Hirst in Wednesday's Higher Education Supplement in the Australian, under the title In Search of Our Nation's Sacred Books. I offered The Australian my own list as a swift antidote to their bombastic canonistic phallologocentric, 'Strinier than thou, one-eyed snake's venom and thought you might like a copy.
These are the texts that let me know Australia, I'm standing in it.
And the band played waltzing matilda (the song, by Eric Bogle).
My Place by Sally Morgan.
Robert J Hawke by Blanche d'Alpuget.
Michael Leunig's cartoon of sheep shearing.
World class debaters Wendy Harmer and Andrew Denton (our answer to Hurl and Die).
Comrades (the film).
Coonardoo by K.S. Prichard
Dame Edna, Sandy Stone, Barry Humphries and Sir Les Patterson all rolled into one.
Any copy of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly (or the West Australian — the same thing really).
Any Late Night Live with Philip Adams (for President).
Jane Widdess-Drews
External Studies Co-ordinator
Edith Cowan University
Claremont WA
Republic
An Australian Republic. To Be or Not To Be?
May the good Lord protect us from the spate of Johnny-come-lately republicans, Libs, Nats and patronising media experts who state that we should be ready to discuss and perhaps accept new ideas and concepts. A few years ago many jumped onto the green bandwaggon, it was fashionable and an election winner. Today the country is still being raped at the whim of foreign investors.
Now the bandwaggon is republicanism, this new idea and concept that is as old as the history of man. Indeed monarchism arose with the exploitation of man by man, concurrent with slavery and its sanctification by institutionalised religion. The Pyramids, the Great Wall and the British Empire, on which the sun has set everywhere except Australia and Ulster, are prime examples of obsolete monarchies.
However, we subjects of Her Majesty, must be flexible and open to change. In name only while remaining colonial subjects of the multi-nationals? The Libs and Nats would have us a banana republic in no time. Labor has already taken that path with its currency deregulation that permits foreign speculators to boom or bust the dollar; its Foreign Investment Review Board that permits the sale of profitable Australian businesses to foreign interests; its privatisation, etc.
Of course, we could remove the Union Jack from our flag and replace it with the Aboriginal flag while still denying the indigenous people land rights. We could remove "Her Majesty's Service" from all government institutions while dismissing tens of thousands of public servants in order to balance budgets and service our foreign debt. And the rich get richer, the poor get poorer while Liberal, national and Labor politicians weep crocodile tears for the unemployed.
An Australian Republic that does not embody remedial economic structural changes is but a Third World dependency by another name; a political gimmick designed by Keating to distract people from the issues that affect their daily lives.
Eric Earley
Alstonville NSW