Mutual obligation
The Federal government is locked into its plan to expand its "work for the dole" scheme. This is being implemented under the rhetoric of "mutual obligation". A mutual obligation which is one-sided.
This and the previous government only seem to be obligated to increase the profits of a few who are already wealthy and crush everybody else. Malcolm Fraser's statement "life wasn't meant to be easy" was not an aberration of his demented thought. Fraser's words reflected his and his cohort's agenda which is to keep the working masses in their place. One way to do this is to threaten the working masses with unemployment.
The Howard government in its short time in office has made unemployment benefits inaccessible to thousands of unemployed people while continuing to close access to educational institutions to all but an elite few. Unemployment for most people means poverty, social stigmatisation and minimal participation in mainstream society, but we are told that unemployed people have a mutual obligation to put back into society what we get out of it.
The mutual obligations that exist for the unemployed is to work in menial positions that the middle classes won't do. I've even heard it said that doing housework and gardening is an entrepreneurial thing to do. This Government is so anti-working class that it spent millions of dollars changing the name and concepts of Social Security into what is now called Centrelink, in order to obliterate from the psyche of the population the concept that social security is available for all.
The reason that social security existed was because of the inadequacies for services provided by private organisations in their search for the bottom line. A lot of work needs to be done in order to maintain ourselves as a society but to willingly allow large portions of the population to languish in absolute poverty is not acceptable. What we have to do is go on strike because the government and business should be mutually obligated to provide decent wages and conditions for all of the people and we are the only one that can make them do this.
Canberra
Animal Farm
With apologies to George Orwell, this is my plea to Malcolm Turnbull the "pig". A pig may desire against nature to walk on two legs like the tyrannical farmer, but an even greater pig would, self aware, choose to walk on four legs forever.
In other words, Malcolm, you can still reject presidential appointment by the bunyip aristocracy (Lib/Nat/Labor) who now think they are above the people, recognise who you really are and how you got there and support the direct election cause. We don't need this top down approach any more or pig on two legs for that matter.
Bondi Beach NSW
Gargantuan excesses
An article by Jeff Gates, in January '99 issue of The Humanist headed "To Humanize, Ownerise" sure makes one think. In it he says "The World Bank identified ninety-five nations in the throes of making the transition from state to private ownership". "Today, five billion people live in market economies up from 1 billion just a decade ago. For the first time in human history a single economic system encircles the globe. Yet World Bank president Jim Wolfensohn pointed out in November 1997 that more than 3 billion live on less than two dollars a day."
With population growing at 80 million a year he warns that unless we devise a more inclusive system "in thirty years we could see five billion living on two dollars a day." The United Nations reported that in 1996 the assets held by the world's 358 billionaires exceeded the combined incomes of countries with 45% of the world's people.
The UN report goes on, "development that perpetuates today's inequalities will produce a world gargantuan in its excesses and grotesque in its human and economic inequalities"; "Population specialists have documented that people in developing countries accumulate children in lieu of an opportunity to accumulate assets. It is their version of economic security and social status." Yet the development community stood blithely by as Indonesia's Suharto clan accumulated $35 billion (1997 CIA estimate) while Indonesia became the world's fourth most populous country.
Balmain NSW
Literacy wrongs
Could John Howard, and John Herron, be given literacy tests, to see if they can read and comprehend the United Nations Declaration on Human Rights for Indigenous People, e.g., the Koori and Murri peoples in Australia?
Wentworth Falls NSW
Labor and uranium
Socialist Worker #404 features an article on the Liberals' plans for the uranium industry on its back page. It contains this curious passage: "The strength of [the 1970s campaign against uranium mining] forced the Labor government elected in 1983 to adopt the three mines policy. This meant there were no new mines for 20 years."
As an activist in the ALP in the early 1980s, I can't remember much popular ground-swell for the idea of the three mines policy. There was certainly a clamouring for the closing of all existing mines, for an end to nuclear ship visits and for the complete withdrawal of Australia from the nuclear fuel cycle.
The three mines policy was foisted on the rank and file of the party (and the anti-nuclear movement) by the ALP machine at its 1984 national conference. This led not only to the mass walk-out of many thousands of ALP members (myself included), but also to the formation of the Nuclear Disarmament Party, which contested the 1984 federal elections, with enormous support from anti-nuclear activists.
Socialist Worker's omission of these facts leads the uninformed reader to conclude that the three mines policy was some kind of victory for the movement, when in fact it was a massive sell-out.
New Farm Qld
Australia and East Timor
Prime Minister Howard declared he would prefer that East Timor remain part of Indonesia and went on to express concern that Australia would be called upon to increase its foreign aid to an independent East Timor.
As a nation we could provide a Free East Timor annually with $100 million (up from the current $6 million) without it damaging our budget or even returning the total foreign aid budget allocation to the level it was at the start of this decade. Subsequently we could within a very few years, cease providing foreign aid at all were we to justly deal with the split-up of oil revenues from the Timor Sea.
If we did that we might go some way towards providing reparation for our connivance in the deaths of 300,000 East Timorese people since the 1975 invasion by Indonesia and we could claim to finally be repaying the Timorese for the 40,000 lives they lost during World War II when they helped stop the invasion of Australia.
Senior lecturer in social policy, School of Human Services, Queensland University of Technology
'Survival of the fittest'
You don't have to go farther than a small chapter about 19th century Britain to understand the philosophical background of the ruling class in Australia, the one oft adopted by the ruled, too.
It is the Affluent Society by John Galbraith (don't underestimate the people from other camps, either). It says in chapter 5, "Herbert Spencer was opposed to the nationalization of the Post Office and the Mint. He was opposed to public education because it would interfere with parental freedom to choose a school to send their offspring as well as the parental right to give or not to give education to their offspring. He opposed the State's subsidy to welfare for the people in need or even public hygiene because it tended to sustain the weakest (to the demerit of whole human race)." This is not exactly how Galbraith wrote but my back translation from Japanese.
It was not Charles Darwin but this Spencer who, for the first time, used the words "survival of the fittest" and the "social evolutionism" school of his ilk that gave the philosophical indulgence to eugenics, Nazism, laissez-faire capitalism and colonialism.
Petersham NSW
Open letter to the Turkish prime minister
To Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit
T.C. Basbakanlik
06573 Ankara, Turkey
Fax: 90-312-212 41 88
We condemn your government's arrest of Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and your plan to place him on trial for murder as a prelude to his execution.
Your government's charges of terrorism against Mr Ocalan and the PKK are false. The struggle of the Kurdish people for self-defence and nationhood constitutes a just battle, one which our 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳, branches and members wholeheartedly support.
It is the government of Turkey that is terrorist in violating all principles of freedom and democracy in its treatment of the 15 million Kurdish women and men whose lands it has usurped. Your government outlaws the Kurdish language, music, education, organisations, and even names. Your government engages daily in direct brutality, torture, imprisonment and institutionalised discrimination against the Kurds. Turkey's military and police are the real terrorists. Their actions against the Kurds are crimes against which any people would rightly defend themselves.
We also condemn the complicity of the United States and Israel in your campaign of genocide against the Kurds. This unholy US-Israeli-Turkish alliance is organised to prevent the recognition of Kurdistan and foment further divisions in the Middle East to exert control over the oil reserves of Arab nations, and to stop the Arab and Kurdish revolutions.
We stand in solidarity with the 40 million Kurds and working people around the world who demand that Turkey immediately and unconditionally release Abdullah Ocalan and give recognition to Kurdistan as the homeland for the Kurdish people
Coordinator, Freedom Socialist Party
Brunswick Vic