Olympics
Sydney Nooo!!
Robert Wood
Surry Hills
Too much meat
Dave Riley's series titled The politics of eating (GLW 109-111), suffers from a distinct lack of politics and history.
It is totally acceptive of agribusiness and does not question the "feed the man meat" culture, the distribution of food in the world, the treatment of food animals, the environmental impact of agriculture, and sheer waste of resources in human and environmental terms that the meat industry survives on.
Whilst it questions various "idealistic" reasons for vegetarianism, it fails to question the eating of meat, particularly the quantities of meat consumed in our western diets.
Human were not created with plant eating in mind, they evolved like all other animals, but evolved on a diet based on plant matter. If we look at the history of the human diet we find consistently that the basis of diet has been of vegetable origins. The mainstream diet we have today is not at similar to that of thousands, even hundreds of years ago as Riley would have us believe (GLW 110).
Indeed, it is only since the 19th century, with the opening of the vast plains of the Americas and Australia to cattle ranching that a meat based diet has become a norm for western society. It provided a cheap, abundant food source, that, with the development canning and refrigeration, could be transported to England to feed the burgeoning urban population.
So began the culture of meat eating, that our lives are not complete with three servings of meat each day. This dietary culture, propagated by the meat business, has separated humanity from its real dietary traditions. It is feeding us a diet in quantities that is foreign to our bodies' evolutionary development, and it is not surprising that our bodies react with a range of degenerative diseases, such as cancers. Eskimos may be non-violent, as Riley points out, but they are riddled with diseases that are a product of their meat rich diet.
There are many studies that have statistically proven the health benefits of a vegetarian based diet. On top of this a growing mountain of evidence documenting the unsustainable impact of the meat agribusiness industry upon the health of the planet.
The debate should not centre around strict vegetarian diets versus meat based diet. It should be which diet is better suited to both human biology and planetary ecology. We cannot change the world through our dinner plates, there are quite obviously broader economic, social and political changes needed.
A meat based diet in the quantities we eat in the west is both unsustainable and unnecessary. I have no problems with the eating of meat, it is the quantities that are eaten, the politics of agribusiness, and poverty I have problems with. Many vegetarians have made the choice to be part of the solution. It is a step, I believe, in a positive direction.
Kevin L'Huillier
Hobart
Discourse
At last someone has pointed out in this paper (Gyorgy Scrinis, GLW 15/9/93) that "capitalism" is a totalitarian reductionist discourse constructed by Marxists.
I have just been in Cuba, where unfortunately the revolutionaries did not realise that "the market", "wage labour", "the food industry", "the brutal murder of 20,000 people by a US backed regime" etc. were free floating discourses, instead constructing a monolithic "capitalism". Tragically unaware of the postmodern condition, they mobilised the workers and peasants to overthrow "capitalism" and institute democratic control over the economy and society, laying the basis for adequate nutrition for all and putting major resources into the researching and developing ecologically sustainable agriculture.
In their unsophisticated minds, the Cubans see discourses of "sexism", "racism", "US imperialism", "economic blockade and CIA sabotage" as problems somehow related to "capitalism". Luckily, the world can be better understood from inner-city Melbourne, and with courageous intellectuals like Gyorgy Scrinis to deconstruct stale orthodoxies and with frequent use of the word reductionist we can ensure that nothing like the Cuban "revolution" ever happens in Australia.
Nick Fredman
Sydney
Hilton bomb
History should temper our expectations of any "once and for all" Hilton bomb inquiry, as recently proposed by Ted Mack MP, and warn of some dangers.
Many asked why it took four years to hold the first inquiry — a coronial inquest in 1982. In the event, that inquest became the showcase for a false Ananda Marga story by the now discredited informer Richard Seary. Remember though, Seary was presented as credible by NSW prosecution authorities. Since then, a senior detective has made the frank admission that police knew this story was false even before the inquest began.
Then in 1989 police ran another false Ananda Marga story, this time aimed at me. That prosecution was discredited in 1991, when Chief Justice Gleeson termed police witness Evan Pederick "incapable" of giving a proper account, and dismissed informer Ray Denning's evidence as worthless. The prosecutor in that case, Mark Tedeschi, is now facing disciplinary charges brought by the NSW Bar Association.
It is in large part because of the collapse of these court cases, and public criticism, that police and prosecutors in this state will be committed to the resurrection of some form of Ananda Marga story, in any future Hilton bomb inquiry. There is no doubt that they wish to salvage their reputations. ASIO and police special branches, in any event, will be especially keen to deflect any accusations made against them, in any such inquiry. Further, discredited witnesses such as Seary and Pederick have already expressed their desire for personal rehabilitation through such an inquiry. Lazarus would be jealous of such attempts.
For my part, and given that the Chief Justice concluded prosecutors had made "one attempt too many" against me, I want no part in any such inquiry. I won't be there. It's taken up too many years of my life already. Allow me, however, to point out those parties who will attend, and who will have their interests represented: NSW police, NSW prosecutors and ASIO.
Don't get your hopes too high.
Tim Anderson
Glebe NSW
SPSF
It is good to see Frans Timmerman (Write on, Sept 15) committing himself to the defense of the current leadership of the SPSF.
It is a pity he is unable to deal with issues either factually or politically. (But then he did play a significant part in preparing the Batt ticket.)
The Age thought the change of attitude toward the government and its industrial legislation significant enough to devote an editorial to it.
Timmerman says the union will only negotiate where there is a guarantee of no diminution of existing conditions. That should reassure the membership no end! All of the current proposals from the various agencies contain significant reduction in conditions and the union is now a short step from allowing the members to accept new contracts that are inferior.
Already temporary officers on Batt's advice have signed work contracts that do away with existing rights and entitlements.
Batt by circular to members says sign on legal advice from the Union's solicitors. These decisions were announced to the world via the Age before being endorsed by State Council, so what chance the members having a say, Mr Timmerman?
Members are leaving the union in droves (over 3,000 since June alone). The union budget has been reduced from a base of 17,000 to 15,000 to 14,000 EFT members since Batt took office. In fact in a circular to members after the salary increase Batt was claiming 19,000 members.
On salaries, Mr Timmerman plucks some figure from the air and says how could I get it so wrong. At a time when the union is reducing in numbers and income and is sacking staff, the secretary whose substantive salary is AM 6 ($43,000) argues for (successfully) a salary of $58,000 and a car allowance (not travel) of $10,000 per year. A car that is owned by Batt, or will be in three years, equals $68,000 so far without throwing in parking space at $100 a month, petrol and of course a small fee for the "Golden Wing Club", and that doesn't take into account the other on costs such as superannuation.
That represents without the parking and fuel a $25,000 cash increase in income for Batt and the fact that she is now taking a 10% cut on her $58,000 is irrelevant.
I support and have always supported the view that bureaucrats should retain the salary they entered office on, with a minimum to ensure that low paid workers are not discriminated against because they become union officials.
The comparison with the previous general secretary is either a red herring or an interesting insight into at least Timmerman's position.
The previous salaries were established by leaderships long gone and the salaries were the most important reason for the Members Action Team succeeding in 1991. Ms Batt voted to reduce that salary by $34,000 at the first executive meeting in 1991.
Finally, the lawsuit to which you refer was not successful because we got the quantum wrong but rather the period of time in which increases occurred.
Timmerman claims the Pledge politicians group refused to endorse McVey. The truth is that we were approached by a Pledge polly advising that Batt had an appointment to request support and we should appear as well, and did to argue that they should not be involved in the election. (Whose offices were used to phone thousands of members during the campaign Mr Timmerman?)
The meatworkers did not contribute to the Member Action Team which we headed.
Bill Deller
SPSF member
Not a Pledge member
Melbourne
Biases
Peter McGregor's letter (8/9/93) pointing to the biases in the paper's coverage of issues and objecting to your cartoon putting down anarchists deserves to be taken more seriously than your dismissive editorial response allows. Peter's name on the founding support lists helped to persuade quite a few of us that GLW just might be able to transcend a narrow DSP allegiance and be worth support by a wider range of left political groupings. The points Peter raises suggest it may be time to revise this view.
If GLW expects to be taken seriously as a broad left paper rather than a DSP mouthpiece, it obviously has to exercise some care in its treatment of other left groups. Will GLW now run (and even repeat) cartoons ridiculing feminists, Greens and Aboriginal people, and similarly proclaim these groups to suffer from "terminal atrophy of their sense of humour" when they object? The anti-anarchist cartoon is an indicator of the way GLW tends to slant coverage to promote the DSP and its offshoots. Thus GLW (08-09) mentions an earlier unreported arson attack on the anarchist bookshop in passing in a prompt report of a graffiti attack on a Trotskyist bookshop. At last year's Youth Summit in Canberra, a number of groups participated and provided speakers, but in GLW only the presence of DSP groups was mentioned and only their speeches reported.
As Peter McGregor correctly points out, GLW constructs support for its cartoon that anarchists are sleepers by issue selection, systematically disappearing or underreporting the kinds of issues anarchists are involved in, especially homelessness, marginalisation and squatting issues. This is not, as your reply asserts, due just to the absence of submitted written material on those subjects. We ourselves have submitted several articles on these issues which were not printed, and might have submitted more had we not received the message that GLW was not interested.
The latest of these, sent in late July, was a report on the fire of July 22nd which destroyed the Childers Street Theatre squat (right next to the distribution point for GLW in Canberra). This report included discussion of the political implications of the fire, the role of the police and their destruction of evidence, and interviews with eyewitnesses and with some of the survivors (who nearly died) describing the way officials treat their lives as of lesser value. Does GLW perhaps share the official view that squatters and street people do not really count and that their issues and lives are of no importance?
Much of GLW's news and issues coverage appears to be trimmed to fit a narrow Marxist paradigm of the oppressed as "the worker", an always problematic but increasingly outdated model. This model disappears many forms of oppression, including those perhaps most severe and most relevant in the 1990s, and colludes with the liberal and neo-liberal paradigm in silencing those at the bottom of the social order. The latest issue of GLW illustrates well the extensive coverage of labor and ACTU issues, and the neglect of issues relevant to the growing numbers of severely deprived and excluded people outside the workforce.
Val Plumwood (Braidwood) and Sean Kenan (Canberra)
[Val Plumwood has had at least four different articles printed in 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳, including a two-page spread in March of last year. Sean Kenan has not written an article, but has had his political activities described in several articles, including articles by Plumwood and by Peter McGregor.
[To the best of my recollection, neither has ever submitted an article to 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ which was not printed. They did not submit an article on the Childers Street fire. About a week after the fire, they sent a leaflet which might have been comprehensible to (at least some) people in Canberra, but would not have been so to most readers in other cities. To make matters still more difficult, both Plumwood and Kenan then rang me separately and warned that they feared the leaflet might be defamatory. I nevertheless indicated to them that I would try to make the leaflet into an article, but as events turned out, I did not have time to do so.
[The implication of Plumwood and Kenan's argument is that I was under some sort of obligation to ghost write an article for them about the Childers Street fire, which would necessarily have meant not being able to edit and publish the article of someone else who had taken the trouble to prepare an account of the activity they were interested/involved in. It seems to me that the obligation to write the article was on them, since they were the people who were most familiar with the facts.
[There is a simple reason why the attack on the Pathfinder shop was reported and that on the Black Rose was not. Pathfinder wrote a press release on the attack and sent it to us. Black Rose didn't.
[As for the "Was going to be an anarchist but slept in" cartoon, if it "put down" anyone, the target would be not anarchists but people who are too lazy or self-indulgent to be politically active. In the same vein, the same cartoonist had a cartoon of an "Armchair activist" in last week's 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳. Do Plumwood and Kenan see this as a wholesale attack on activists of all description? Or maybe on armchairs? — Editor.]