S11 and M1
Janet Burstall (Write On, GLW #426) suggests that it would be better for the S11 movement to focus on actions against specific global corporations instead of making its major next focus the proposed M1 (May 1) global strike against corporate tyranny.
The Democratic Socialist party and Resistance have organised quite a lot of actions against specific corporations, and these still have a place. But, if as Burstall says, her concern is to raise working-class consciousness, it's hard to see how focussing on immediate demands on particular corporations like Rio Tinto, McDonald's and Nike will do a better job.
After all, getting this or that corporation to make a few ameliorative measures does not go outside the boundaries of capitalism.
Targeting specific corporations also does not challenge the conservative ALP domination of trade unions. S11 did.
The new global movement against corporate tyranny is already way ahead of the consciousness that sees this or that business as good or bad "corporate citizens". It is demanding the total cancellation of the Third World debt, the abolition of major international capitalist institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and WTO.
Getting more workers and their organisations to come into this movement would be a blow against the traditional conservatism in the working class in rich, exploiter nations like Australia.
Several unions in Melbourne have agreed to work together with S11 activists in building M1, hopefully Burstall and her comrades in Workers Liberty will help draw in more workers to the M1 mass mobilisations.
Finally, I cannot understand how you could describe the popular movements of South Africa, the Philippines and Spain in the 1930s as "mind-dulling". They may have been defeated or coopted but certainly weren't mind-dulling. Geez, you must have thought S11 was a total yawn!
Peter Boyle
DSP national office
Chippendale NSW
[Abridged.]
Balibo five
Thank you for printing the Balibo Five letter, with its call for a full judicial inquiry into that affair, and the killing of Roger East in Dili seven weeks later.
Too late, I received as signatories to the letter broadcaster Alan Jones' name, and that of the superintendent of the Wesley mission in Sydney, Reverend Dr Gordon Moyes AM. I thank them.
The list of over forty signatories is very far from "the usual suspects". Shortly after the letter was printed in the Age, on October 14, the Cunningham family (of Balibo Five victim, Gary Peters) had a letter printed, on Monday October 16, endorsing the letter and asking that their names be added. I thank them also, and apologise to them for not thinking to contact them beforehand.
On a lighter note, 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly is the only publication (so far) to print the full letter. One may not say that Richard Woolcott is part of the Jakarta lobby that promotes a pro-Jakarta line. How long is it since till it is a legal risk to say the Pope is Catholic, or that the Sydney Opera House is in Sydney?
Perhaps it is time we printed the names, week by week, of the politicians, journalists, government bureaucrats and academics who were, over twenty-five years, apologists for the Suharto regime, and its genocide in East Timor.
Viva Timor Lorosa'e.
Stephen Langford
Secretary, Australia East Timor Association
Sydney
Beazley's sexist call
Kim Beazley was reported to have called for Australian families to have more babies (October 13 address to the Association of Independent Retirees), claiming that "government will retreat even further if there are no young people to work and pay taxes".
With the country's biggest banks announcing breathtaking record profits over the past week, it is clear there is an obvious source of tax revenue that is not being sufficiently utilised. Taxation of the big banks and other big businesses would provide a working people's government with the revenue for social services, environmental repair and other socially useful projects.
Instead, the ALP's Beazley reinforces the notion that it is workers who should pay the cost for such services. Capitalists' profits require workers (preferably in relative oversupply, so as to keep wages down) and consumers. However, the cost of the workers' reproduction and maintenance is not borne by capitalists, but is privately borne by families, and especially, women.
Capitalists profit, so why don't they pay? Calling for a new baby boom while funding is declining for childcare, health care and other socially provided services is tantamount to a call for the intensification of women's oppression, since it is overwhelmingly women who bear unpaid the burden of the work of families: the care of the young, the sick, the aged.
The call for measures to "improve Australia's birth rate" also taps into racism and national chauvinism: if Australia needs more people, what's wrong with immigrants? There are plenty of people seeking access to Australia, currently held in detention centres, even being deported. Why promote a baby boom and fail to open Australia's borders to all who wish to come here? Sounds like the White Australia policy to me.
Kamala Emanuel
Hobart
ISO and feminism
Post-S11, the mood amongst various left organisations has been more open and comradely. So imagine my surprise when an International Socialist Organisation (ISO) member refused to place Reclaim the Night (RTN) leaflets on their stall, just two hours before the event.
Unfortunately, not all socialists are feminists. The ISO claims to fight for "women's liberation" but not "feminism", as Russian revolutionaries (such as Kollantai and Krupskaya) never used the term "feminism". The ISO's involvement in organising feminist actions has been minimal at best.
An ISO member argued that they were prioritising the refugee issue over Reclaim the Night. However, one of RTN's main demands in Melbourne were "Open the Borders, Free the Refugees". The ISO had no organised presence at RTN to support or articulate this demand and refused to build the rally.
Perhaps the ISO member who refused to take the leaflets was more honest. He said the he had to get clarification, but that the ISO had a position against supporting RTN.
It is a crucial duty of socialists to consistently organise against women's oppression. Capitalism rides on the back of women's unpaid labour in the home: cooking, cleaning, raising the next generation of workers.
Capitalist governments work hard to convince women their "natural role" is in the home. If capitalism can't do that effectively — like during the '70s women's liberation movement — then it has to pay for childcare, pay single mothers pensions, allow no-fault divorce, support affirmative action programs in the workplace, allow maternity leave and so on.
Capitalist governments wanting to give more to the rich and screw the poor harder, see women's independence as a luxurious expense. As Lenin said, "We will not have socialism until we fully liberate women from their domestic drudgery".
Let's hope that all socialists can get behind International Women's Day and build the working women's fight back.
Rachel Evans
Reclaim the Night Collective member
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
CIA and Whitlam
On October 8, the Sunday Age revealed that evidence had emerged regarding the CIA briefing of John Kerr prior to the Whitlam government dismissal in 1975. At last the silence has been broken about what many of us knew or suspected. The dismissal highlights some interesting perspectives on Australia s attitude to its history.
At this time of year, as my rage increases, I often pull out a documentary made in 1979 by the International Peace and Disarmament Council called Home on the Range.
It shows the telexes from James Jesus Angleton, the then head of the CIA, condemning Senator Murphy's raid on the ASIO offices in Melbourne, asking how can American secrets be safe with "this Whitlam government". At the time the Pine Gap lease was up for renewal and Whitlam was procrastinating about it.
Christopher Boyce, working at that time for the CIA, was found guilty of passing American secrets to the Russians. He stated that one of his main motivations for his actions was the way the CIA was spying on a supposed ally, Australia, via its Rhyolite spy satellite. The breaking of the Loans Affair is naturally linked to calls from Whitlam government ministers trying to raise international loans, being eavesdropped by the satellite.
The power brokers in Australia and the US are now of course happy with the 51st state, the cultural and economic take-over proceeds apace. Chile was another CIA triumph of the time, except they used guns there. The dismissal aided and abetted by the CIA is still ancient history in Australia. How they won and we lost is still a story that needs to be told.
David Harris
Geelong Vic
[Abridged.]