Newcastle Uni elections
Matt Thompson's letter in GLW #429 attacks our article on the disqualification of Peter Robson from the Newcastle University presidential by-election (GLW #428) without once referring to the article's main points. His letter attempts to divert attention from the central issues surrounding the disqualification in order to concentrate on some cheap attacks on Resistance.
We support spending limits on election material. At other campuses, the ALP funds glossy posters of their student candidates, giving them an unfair advantage over other students. However, none of the literature on sale at the Resistance stall could have been described as election campaign material. The Communist Manifesto does not include a sentence stating: "workers of the world, vote for Peter Robson".
Yes, the Resistance stall carried literature arguing for a particular political perspective which Peter campaigned for during the election. But for Peter to distance himself from such a broader political perspective for election week would have been dishonest and utterly opportunist.
Thompson claims "A lonely accuracy in the article is the quoting of my claim that, 'Studying history gives a clearer view of life than spouting ideology'." Didn't your candidate statement also include the assertion that "The twin pillars of uni life are fun and study" and "The HECS system is a fair compromise, infinitely better than up-front fees"?
Thompson's claim that article's headline — "Students outraged by Newcastle Uni election decision" — was misleading is untrue. It accurately described the response to the decision by students — or at least those who heard about it. In the two hours following the returning officer's decision not to allow a count of the votes cast and to declare Thompson the winner, the Resistance club collected over 20 email addresses from students opposed to the decision and willing to do something about it. A number of students with different political beliefs turned up to the executive meeting which heard Robson's appeal in order to support him.
Melody Coutman and Alison Dellit
Newcastle University Resistance Club
[Abridged.]
An Aboriginal nation or a Bosnia solution?
In his letter "An Aboriginal nation", in GLW #428, Steve McCauley argues that "we give them [Aboriginal people] nationhood". The territory that he proposes for such a "nation"-state consists of a central and northern part of Queensland.
The first question posed by McCauley's "solution" is who does he mean by "we"? Australians, excluding Aboriginal people? White Australians? The Australian government?
The second question posed is how would such a "solution" be carried out? Would Aboriginal people once again be forcibly removed from the lands on which they live and be repatriated to barren rural areas without access to housing, running water, schools and other basic facilities?
McCauley would do well to examine previous such attempts at partitioning of a nation's territory as a "solution" to ethnic conflict, such as the partition of Bosnia in 1995. The official partitioning of Bosnia, by the US sponsored Dayton accords, followed a campaign of ethnic cleansing by the Milosevic regime and its Chetnik allies that brutally expelled a million Moslems and Croats.
An alternative solution to Aboriginal oppression would be a nation-state based on real equality for its indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants. While a movement for indigenous rights in the 1960s and 1970s was successful in extending formal equality to indigenous people, real equality between Aborigines and non-Aboriginal people in this country will require a fundamental assault on the power of the capitalist class in this country, a class that uses racism enshrined in the populism of One Nation and the policies of the Howard government to divide white and non-white Australians.
Nick Everett
Ashfield NSW
[Abridged.]
Omission
In editing my article on the truck owner-drivers' demonstration held in Melbourne on November 13 (GLW #429), the fact that it was organised by the Transport Workers Union was omitted. The TWU also organised the month-long strike of tip-truck owner-drivers in the quarrying and excavation industries, which succeeded in winning higher cartage rates.
Unfortunately the TWU did not give its backing to the blockades of oil depots and freight terminals at the port of Melbourne on November 20, carried out by owner-drivers in the long distance freight industry. Without union backing this struggle is unlikely to succeed.
Chris Slee
Melbourne
Lockerbie
Based on questionable American evidence, Libya was accused of the Lockerbie bombing and the so-called evidence was used again in the Security Council to impose sanctions against Libya, the US attacked and murdered her people! Ironically, that unfortunate incident was twisted with extreme creativity to malign Muslims and Islam by the western media.
Ten years later, finally, the Scottish Court handed down the verdict that two Libyan suspects were not guilty and that finding is consistent with a few independent documentary makers who have pointed their finger to some botched up CIA operations!
Surprise! Surprise!! The media reporting of the Scottish verdict was beyond complacency. It is a testimony of an anti-Muslim media as a whole.
However, a blind cleric, who was accused of the Anwar Sadat murder, was escorted from the Egyptian jail and shipped to the hilltops of Afghanistan by the holy United States administration to fight against Russia. Eventually, he was flown to the USA without any valid documentation and lived there for a long time.
One day, the world woke up to find a Muslim cleric accused and eventually convicted for the New York World Square bombing related offence.
A former Egyptian army officer serving in the US army supposedly confessed to the Nairobi and Kenyan bombings. He linked the prized "object" Osama bin Laden (who?) with this crime. Very convenient!
All of this is happening when the professional victim Israel was condemned by the world except for the US, UK and in a time slot when peace between Israel and Palestine is sorely needed.
After all, the modern world economy needs an enemy! Hitler's Germany, Stalin's Russia, Castro's Cuba, Kim's Korea, now the disgraced NATO Secretary General Klause's new found enemy "Islam"!
I wonder, is there any connection with all of the above and the lucrative arms business? Isn't it another example of "ism" (racism, communalism, socialism, capitalism etc) being used to satisfy human lust and greed??
Faruque Ahmed
[Abridged.]
Schools funding
It is expected that the federal ALP will concur in the Coalitions' education formula favouring independent and well-heeled schools. This trend has already been encouraged by the NSW ALP over several years and was targeted by us during the March 1999 state election. The PLP is committed to re-establish quality public education as a major priority by government. Our question is will all those prominent organisations which have now publicly declared to campaign against the latest form of privatisation by stealth, at the expense of public education, support us this time? What is the point in protesting against the major parties' education policies if voters are not directed by them to another party or registered parties which present education policies favoured by such organisations. That is precisely what democracy is about!
Klaus Woldring
Frenchs Forest NSW