Jailed for Jabiluka
We are watching the sky through rolls of barbed wire in the Berrimah Prison outside Darwin. Dressed in prison issue, the 7 of us are held on remand waiting to see a magistrate. Of the 106 arrested at Jabiluka on July 3, we 7 have refused bail and taken our protest to prison.
We are routinely handcuffed and locked in solitary cells because we passionately feel that the Jabiluka mine in the heart of Kakadu should not proceed. Our "crime" was to enter land owned by the Mirrar people, which we have been invited upon by the traditional owners. We see that the real crime taking place is by the company ERA and the government which sanctions their activity.
This development on Mirrar land is unequivocally opposed by the traditional owners. ERA's plans to mine uranium will reap death and destruction for hundreds of thousands of years. The contamination from the mine site will enter the world heritage area of Kakadu.
Nothing good will ever come of Jabiluka.
Our refusal of bail is rooted in our fundamental disagreement with the law as it stands. We are challenging the processes of law which favour efficiency over justice and which do not incorporate an ethic of just morality at every step.
We are not criminals, yet are imprisoned for our beliefs. We are willing to give up our personal freedoms in the hope that our country will come to its senses.
Berrimah Prison NT
Legalise drugs
The evident failure of the government's campaign against drugs is so obvious that it seems to me that a completely new approach is needed.
If you legalise drugs, you immediately destroy the black market. This is the real reason why dealers will go to any lengths to bring on new customers and develop their appetites. With legalisation, people could go to the doctors to get their prescriptions at a realistic price.
Of course the doctor could explain the foolishness and futility of it all.
Finally, remember the failure of prohibition in the USA some years ago. Gang warfare, many people blinded and many dead of illness caused by drinking the "bath tub" gin, whisky etc brewed in dirty conditions.
Legalise it with a campaign to discourage customers, but at least the government ensures the end of the "bathtub gin era".
Balmain NSW
Job casualisation
Congratulations on Sue Boland's chilling and realistic article "Is any job safe?" (GLW #318). She charts the decline in workers' ability to control their job security, ties this in with enterprise bargaining and casualisation, and demonstrates the consequent decline in their prosperity. It is essential reading for every worker and every union official!
Sue's message was reinforced by the MUA article (GLW #323). It's clear that the MUA leadership has struck a deal with Patrick's which accepts a massive loss of permanent jobs now, and will lead to a massive increase in the percentage of workers employed casually in the future.
My colleagues and I experienced the same process at Northern Melbourne Institute of TAFE. Permanent teachers were retrenched, the active unionists being the ones targeted, and sessional teachers were employed in their place.
As Chris Cain says in the MUA article, "with casualisation comes the demise of the trade union movement". To counter this erosion of union power the AEU sub-branch at NIMIT set up a joint union and community campaign committee. Its job is to keep up, on the ground, the fight to reinstate the sacked workers, while the central union pursues the case at the Equal Opportunity Board.
We call ourselves the No More Intimidation of Teacher (NMIT) unionists campaign committee. We are fighting the forces that Sue Boland so graphically describes and we won't give up!
Like the MUA we can always use help! Ring Alison on (03) 9386 5065 or Delia on (03) 9497 1496.
Alphington Vic
Queensland election
Martin Thomas (GLW #321) suggested that the DSP did not directly address the embittered people who were considering voting for One Nation. Sam Wainwright (GLW #323) responds: "In our election material we sheeted home the blame for people's pain to where it really belongs". Good. But was this material directed at potential supporters of One Nation?
Where should a party, with sufficient resources to stand two candidates, choose to campaign in order to maximise its impact on One Nation's support in Queensland? It would have been logistically difficult to target rural seats, but what about the two Ipswich seats? One Nation scored almost 40% of the first preference vote in both these seats.
The DSP chose instead to stand in Brisbane Central and South Brisbane, where One Nation's support was far lower. The campaign against One Nation in Ipswich was left to the ALP. Sam says: "Our main election activity was our own election campaign". But the DSP's campaign was invisible where it was most needed.
Brisbane
Anagram
PAULINE HANSON'S IMMIGRATION POLICY is an anagram of I PIN HOPE ON UGLY RACISM, NATIONALISM.
Darwin
Very Fast Train hype
Why all the hype about the Transrapid maglev monorail? After 20 years of development in Germany, Thyssen Transrapid still only have one test track and one train. The test train reached 450km/h in 1993, but that was five years ago and they haven't done any better since. That is 100km/h short of the proposed 550km/h between Sydney and Canberra.
In comparison, Speedrail proposes running at 350km/h using French TGV technology. The TGV reached 515km/h in 1990. That is 165km/h faster than the proposed running speed between Sydney and Canberra. The "leading edge" technology just can't match conventional trains. The TGV also runs on conventional tracks which makes it more flexible when running into the centre of large cities.
The Transrapid requires very powerful magnets to levitate the train. The long term health and environmental effects of strong magnetic fields are not yet known, but magnetic fields can cause problems for computers, mobile phones, hearing aids and heart pacemakers.
The Transrapid is unproven technology. The TGV has been in regular service for 15 years. Let's not make a $4 billion mistake.
Rape is violence
The Courier-Mail ran articles "She-Devil Author in Rape Row" (1/7/98) and "Author Defends Rape Law" (2/7/98). I was outraged by author Fay Weldon's recent comments that "men simply want sex", and that the charge of rape should be downgraded to a lesser charge of aggravated assault. Weldon claims that if a woman is safe, alive and unmarked, rape is not the worst thing that could happen to her.
I fail to understand how a woman could feel safe and unmarked after an attempted rape or rape itself, providing she is not murdered during the attack. Did Weldon feel safe and unmarked during and after her male "friend" tried to rape her? Women who have been raped have been psychologically scarred and do not feel safe.
As I drafted this letter, a few hours after the first article was printed I heard a man say to his "friends", "Did you hear? Fay Weldon said that women don't mind being raped". Unfortunately some media and advertising create and sustain a social climate that fosters sexual violence and harassment by portraying women either as weak, vulnerable creatures that need protection, or volatile sex objects packaged as a commodity to be exploited by men.
In the Courier-Mail's second article, Weldon backpedalled furiously, stating her comments were not written in full, by a male journalist. When Weldon completed her statement, the meaning was not changed. Weldon, in panic mode, sought a reprieve by stating that "rapists can be strung up from lamp posts". Capital punishment and torture are as unacceptable as violence against women. Weldon claims she is ahead of her time. It is plain by this statement that not just men choose to stand apart from people who want an end to violence in all its forms. From Weldon's privileged position, she scoffs and looks down on women who have less economic power than her.
The community should know that sexist violence against women is a daily reality that all women experience in some form or another. It is a vicious product of the social and economic conditions of undemocratic society, where women are still treated as second class citizens. Weldon complains about a male journalist, but the problem is not the gender of the journalist but the media that feed on her destructive comments. If she wants to boost her movie and books sales, she should join others who encourage positive and realistic images of women and their struggle for equality.
Brisbane
[Abridged.]
Early capitalism
It was a pleasure to read Phil Shannon's excellent refutation (GLW #324) of New Zealand businessman Roger Kerr's attempt to prettify the record of early capitalism (a record which hasn't improved very much, one might add).
Statistics on infant mortality compiled by the British government in 1863, quoted by Marx in volume 1 of Capital, throw considerable light on how "average" figures for health or wealth can be used to mystify reality.
In the most favoured 16 of the districts into which England was divided, the mortality rate averaged 9085 per 100,000 infants under one year of age (the lowest figure was 7047). This shows what was possible with the medical knowledge of the day, but working-class families suffered much higher infant mortality rates.
In 24 districts, the mortality per 100,000 was between 10,000 and 11,000; in 39 districts, 11,000-12,000; in 48 districts, 12,000-13,000; in 22 districts, 20,000-21,000; in 25 districts, 21,000-22,000; in 17 districts, 22,000-23,000; in 11 districts, 23,000-24,000; in 4 districts 24,000-25,000; in 3 districts, 25,000-26,000; in 1 district 26,001; and in Manchester 26,125.
The government's inspectors were virtually unanimous in blaming high infant mortality on mothers working long hours while their small children were neglected at home, often pacified with opiates. The mothers thought they were forced to work by economic necessity — they hadn't had the benefit of Kerr explaining to them that their husbands' wages were rising.
Sydney
Activism
I am intrigued to notice that One Nation is concerned that immigration shouldn't significantly alter the ethnic and cultural mix of Australia. It set me wondering about the ethnic and cultural mix of Australia in 1770 and the effects of the first great wave of immigration about that time.
Hanson and her ilk are denying Australia's violent colonial past by presenting themselves as victims of aggressive and threatening non-English-speaking immigration (the threatening and dangerous NESI). To be sure, we are being done over by migration, but this time of capital moving at will.
One Nation's success is proof of the power of a mass activist campaign to reach the information impoverished — a poverty line most of us ignore. This campaign puts left "activism" to shame and is clear sign of the left's need to break with the lobbyist approach so common in contemporary social "movements".
TV advertising and telemarketing are useless when there are those who can't afford to access those media. Net campaigns are in a different universe. Just reading this paper is not enough! It's time to get back on the stump.
For those of us not-too-far-abroad who are terrified by the Hanson putsch in Queensland and the Howard-Harradine backstabbing tango in Canberra, it is so gratifying to see and hear that the resistance is there. But it is not yet in the bush. Oh, there is so far to go.
Wellington NZ