Brokeback Mountain
The movie review of Brokeback Mountain in GLW #654 contains a common error by pro-queer reviewers. The review suggests that men who are behaviourally bisexual are "really" gay and that both men need to grow up in order to be "able to accept" that they are gay.
Both cowboys had longstanding relationships with women, with Ennis marrying Alma and with Jack marrying Lureen. They both had children.
The affair between the two cowboys went on and off for 20 years, and they are certainly excited about meeting each other for sex. However, this could easily be the same excitement that a person in an established relationship has about having a bit of different sex every once in a while. It doesn't show that heterosexual sex was impossible, distasteful or not preferred by the two main characters.
This is not to deny that Jack clearly wanted to live with Ennis and they both loved each other. But the fact is that the two men are bisexual. Trying to fit everyone in the straight/gay category and portraying bisexual people as needing to accept their sexuality and declare their "true" sexuality doesn't accurately describe actual behaviour or identity and is not supported by the evidence we do have about human sexual behaviour.
Dale Mills
Chippendale, NSW
Socialist Alliance
I was pleased to read in GLW #654 the article by Renfrey Clarke concerning the electoral strategy of the Socialist Alliance in South Australia to use the constitutional powers of the state government to defend the citizenry. When a few years ago I was secretary of the Greens NSW, I raised this same strategy informally with Greens MLC Lee Rhiannon. Just after that, I left the Greens NSW and, after a couple of years, joined the Socialist Alliance. Without someone to pursue the matter it appears little has become of it within the Greens NSW.
The SA can do better. We should use the federal system of government and the considerable powers of the "Westminster" state parliaments to do battle with the centralist, reactionary feds.
Let's do our research and reverse the Lib/Lab trend of surrendering all sovereignty to Bush's vassal in Canberra [Howard/Beazley].
As in the unions, the ALP people in government know how best to cower, conform and capitulate. They have no stomach for a fight. We do.
Fighting for the rights of our people in this way, I believe will capture the imagination of those demoralised by the ALP's total capitulation to capitalist hegemony and show voters that there are other options. Let's follow our South Australian comrades' lead.
Dave Bell
Orange, NSW
Marijuana
Alarm bells should be ringing over the suggestion by Christopher Pyne, the parliamentary secretary to the federal minister for health, that mental health funding under a Council Of Australian Governments (COAG) agreement should be tied to tougher marijuana laws.
There is simply not enough evidence linking marijuana consumption to mental illness. Pyne is mistaken when he states that the link is "clearly proven".
Australian-based researcher Louisa Degenhardt and two colleagues tested the hypothesis of a causal relationship between cannabis use and schizophrenia by carefully examining the incidence of schizophrenia in Australia over a 30-year period. The results, published in 2003, found that although the prevalence of marijuana use had increased markedly during that period, there was no evidence of a significant increase in the incidence of schizophrenia.
Despite claims by some mental health professionals that some pre-existing mental illnesses can be exacerbated or "brought on" by marijuana use, the evidence that supports this is extremely dubious.
The end result of the commonwealth's proposed re-criminalisation of marijuana would be a dramatic increase in the number of people in our prisons. This would have a devastating impact on the mental, emotional, spiritual and social wellbeing of those Australians who are unlucky enough to be incarcerated.
Pyne would have you believe that they are being incarcerated for their own good and for the good of the nation. He is horribly wrong. The almost negligible negative health effects of marijuana call for legalisation and regulation, not further criminalisation.
Gary Meyerhoff
The Narrows, NT
Anti-choice Liberals
Liberal Party politicians regularly tell us how much they believe in individual choice and oppose the prescriptive, nanny state. But a substantial proportion of federal Liberal MPs are prepared to vote to allow one member of the federal government, Tony Abbott, to deny Australian women access to a medical abortion using RU486 which many women would probably like to choose in preference to a surgical abortion.
Never mind if the Therapeutic Goods Administration approves RU486, if the woman's personal physician thinks her decision is reasonable, and if she is provided with information about the dangers of medical abortion. What was that about trusting Australians to make judgements for themselves?
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
Coca-Cola in India
Regarding your report on Coca Cola in India in GLW #655, Ganagaikonda is not the only place where people are up against Coke. For more than a year, people of Plachimada village in Kerala have been agitating for closure of the Coke plant in the village.
Coke has depleted the groundwater in the low rainfall area and has ruined subsistence farmers and destroyed the water in their wells. The plant has dumped sludge from its factory over the fields and gave it as "free fertiliser" to farmers. An analysis of the sludge by the University of Exeter in 2003, showed high levels of cadmium and lead.
People in Kala Dera or Rajasthan and Mehdiganj of Uttar Pradesh states have been fighting for closure of the Coke plants in their villages for at least two years. Protesters in Mehdiganj have been beaten by the police and people face political, judicial and bureaucratic hurdles all along the way.
Officials of the Pollution Control Board in Uttar Pradesh have given a clean chit to the sludge being dumped by Coke in Mehdiganj, but were silent when challenged by the villagers to stand in the sludge for 10 minutes.
Interestingly, but not surprisingly, Coke and Pepsi have used their money and political power to acquire almost the entire indigenous soft drinks industry, just as GM has taken over the public sector Maruti Industries and Ford has acquired the local Escorts automobile company.
Ironically, Coke is selling its garbage in South India where one of the world's best health drinks — water from tender coconuts — is available in plenty.
Narendra Mohan Kommalapati
Spence, ACT
From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, February 15, 2006.
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