Spiritualism I
Charles Smith (GLW #308) criticises GLW for its dismissal of spiritualism and superstition. He argues that spiritualism has grown beyond organised religion, and through it "we could understand more about the energies of the Earth and its inhabitants as a whole".
How? The concept of spiritualism has no material basis. Contrary to helping us understand the world, such ideas serve to confuse. In doing so, they play a particular role — diverting us from struggling against the real source of the problems in our society.
Smith also claims that tarot cards and astrology are "a different order of knowledge ... which we could do well to seriously look at". A serious look at tarot cards and astrology has found them both to be totally disproved — completely devoid of reality.
Third World poverty, which condemns billions to lives of misery, will not be ended through the lining up of constellations. US sanctions on Iraq, which have killed 1.5 million Iraqi people, will not end when the planet's "aura" is right. The solution to unemployment, racism, sexism and environmental destruction are not in tarot cards, the stars, or some great all-knowing god.
The solution lies in people around the world understanding the reasons for our situation, and working together to change it. There is no time for diversions.
Bayview NSW
Spiritualism II
Ron Guignard (Write on, GLW #311) defends various forms of spiritualism against science by pointing out that the French Academy of Sciences in the 19th century refused to look at the evidence for the existence of meteorites. In this, it was rather like the spiritualists of the Catholic Church who refused to look through Galileo's telescope, though I do not believe that the academy ever burned anyone at the stake.
There is not much left of Ron's argument if we specify that people who refuse to look at evidence are not scientists, whatever they may call themselves.
Ron argues that spiritualism is really "a type of energy that is ill-understood, if at all, by current science". Well, I won't refuse to look at the evidence, but he really needs to produce some. Otherwise, why should we believe in his ill-understood energy rather than the ill-understood deity who some believe wrote the bible to make himself better understood?
Finally, Ron is wrong in suggesting that the attraction of dialectical materialism is that dialectical materialists are automatically partisans of socialist revolution. Dialectical materialism is a method (which includes evidence) for understanding reality. It cannot dictate what one chooses to do about that reality, just as a knowledge of the laws of flight cannot force one to become a pilot.
That said, I'm sure Ron will excuse me if I choose not to be flown by a pilot who steers by the I Ching.
Sydney
Digby Cooper, the St George cattleman fighting resumption of his second property to build water storage to supply the Cotton Industry, has this greenie's unconditional support. If he needs help manning the barricades, I'm there!
After seriously denuding vast areas of the United States by its policy of buying cheap marginal land, working it till you killed it, then moving on, the cotton industry amassed huge profits. American greenies seriously curtailed their activities.
Australia has proven much greener pastures. The American cotton companies operating in Australia have a lot of ties with those in Government, by allowing friends, relatives and others with close links, either major shareholdings or prominent positions within their organisation. Government is less likely to see the industry in its destructive light.
Successive Federal, State and Local Governments have bent over backwards to give the Cotton Industry a green light, despite the mountain of evidence that Cotton Growing is a major no no for Australia. Even forgetting the lessons learnt from the current mess of the Murray Darling Basin, and if we only deride the Cotton Industry for the strain it puts on the rest of the rural sector and natural sector in its gluttony for Australia's most precious resource, water, it's a killer crop!
Legitimate Cotton Farmers shouldn't oppose Green efforts to remove the Cotton Industry from our shores. If they're any good at their job, they know the farming methods employed by these big conglomerates aren't sustainable!
Canungra Qld
[Abridged.]
Reconciliation
With reference to the march in Adelaide (see GLW #310) where 2000 people took part in support for reconciliation and native title: Native title yes but not reconciliation. It's absolutely senseless to speak about reconciliation while the aboriginal people remain landless in their own country.
I say this to the Aboriginal people: for Christ's sake! (used as a swear word) wake up to yourselves and give any talk about reconciliation the boot! Don't fall for the Howard Government's trick of reconciliation. Let your slogan be Land Rights Now! To hell with reconciliation. It's quite obvious Aboriginal Leaders who promoted reconciliation have since sold out the cause of the aboriginal people. All they were interested in was the big dollar bills of the Howard government.
Brisbane
ANL sell-off
The Howard Government is bent on selling the dozen or so ships remaining of the once-flourishing Australian National Line. It is an issue in which it has cannily kept its cards close to its chest. The advice to the ANL by then transport minister John Sharp of September 2 was not revealed to the media. It was for a sell-off.
The last the public knew was when King Keating the Crafty was trying to sell the line and the public were fed the half truth that it was a load on the taxpayer.
Captain Bill Bolitho, who has been seafaring head of the line for 11 years, paints a different picture in the Victorian produced monthly The Strategy.
Keating and Brereton, his transport minister, had dismissed Captain Bolitho and his board in 1994, initially installing "Brereton's Mate" Neville Wran, as chairman. When the Maritime Union was instrumental in forestalling a sale to the British company P&O, the Bankstown Bonaparte put a four-man board in charge of "reconstructing" the ANL with a view to selling it off.
Two former top men from private shipping complex Howard Smith did return the line to profitability — a fact unknown to the public.
But the other two men on the board are active Government privatisers. And Howard and Co. have kept that board.
Don't forget the scandal of the first Australian Government line, founded by Billy Hughes and Labor in 1916, but wrecked and sold off by the Bruce non-Labor Government in the '20s.
Altona Vic
[Abridged.]
Space
Rosanne Bersten says that gay and bi men are asking for male-only space in some bars for the same reason as lesbian and bi women want a women-only space at Mardi Gras: they don't want to be cruised by members of the opposite sex (Write on, GLW #311).
That misses the point. The political demand for women-only space originated with the recognition that if women were to organise themselves most effectively to struggle for the liberation of all women, they needed areas and vehicles for organising which were free of the threat or reality of male intimidation or control. That is, the basis for women-only space was political, not social.
In their private lives, people of whatever sex and sexuality can exclude or include anyone they want. Separatism in our social lives is a choice every woman (and gay man) has the right to make. But let's not pretend that separatism is useful politically.
Over the years, women's liberationists' demand for women-only organising space seems to have been transformed into the idea that spaces reserved for specific groups of people are somehow inherently (and always) progressive. They're not. When detached from political strategy, such "privatised" space is individualistic ("I've won my little plot of territory and the rest of the world be damned") and utopian (it neither challenges nor undermines the fundamental sources of oppression).
Our end goal should not be to carve out a bit of personal space which is (partially) free of the injustices of society, but to engage with and challenge society by struggling collectively and as effectively as possible against a system which, in fact, allows (almost unlimited) private ownership of "space" only by a tiny, privileged minority.
Sydney