Refugees
At a recent Politics in the Pub forum in Sydney, a cheer went up when a speaker, Phil Glendenning (director of the Edmund Rice Centre) said: "We must internationalise this issue." That issue is the ill-treatment of refugees in Australia. Australia detains them, sometimes for years, and some are deported to torture and death. Even now PM John Howard, as a sop to the Indonesian regime, is trying to have West Papuans arriving here by boat shipped off to Nauru, a distant island, wrecked by phosphate mining, and not a signatory to the 1951 Refugee Convention. This way lies madness, suicide, and the death of human rights. We heard that British PM Tony Blair is are considering the same wretchedness — camps in Albania. Please, whoever you are reading this, do not allow your government to go down this horrible, populist track. Free the refugees.
Stephen Langford
Paddington NSW
Lebanon
Thousands of Australians are currently trapped in Lebanon's capital city Beirut, and many in Lebanon's south, with the Australian government doing much less to help them than it has done in the past with convicted drug smugglers such as Schapelle Corby and the Bali nine. Meanwhile, Australian soldiers are risking their lives in Iraq when they should be mobilising to save Australians trapped in Lebanon.
This reveals a disgusting form of second-class citizenship — with the Australian government failing to aid a group of Australians which they have happily used as political scapegoats in the past. The only current form of assistance the Australian government is offering is a 1300 number which requires endangered Australians to endanger themselves further by travelling to the Australian embassy or towards unbombed communication lines to say that they "are fine". This proves to be a little difficult, considering that Israel has notoriously bombed Lebanon's main roads and infrastructure in its goal to turn Lebanon back "20 years".
Furthermore, the green flag the Australian government is holding for Israel to use more extreme terrorising force is endangering Australian citizens even further.
While Australians at home are fed with propaganda that Lebanon "asked" for such attacks, they are forgetting that Hizbollah does not target civilians in Israel unless civilians in Lebanon are targeted first.
Israel has turned small-scale mutual military operations into a full-scale war to destroy Lebanon in its aim to "reset the ground rules".
While the Australian government and media try to disguise this disgusting attempt of Israel to undermine
Lebanon's autonomy and murder its citizens as "self-defence", they are covering up their failure to help stranded Australian citizens with propaganda lies.
Shame on the Australian government and media for reducing Australian citizenship to a cheap commodity and Australians into misinformed robots.
Diana Spencer
Via email [Abridged]
Police and drugs
Margarita Windisch (GLW, July 5) is correct: police operations like the Project Reduction do not work. The aim is to stop people using or selling heroin in neighbourhoods like Footscray, but instead they merely force people into more hidden and difficult to access areas.
The Victorian state government established health facilities for drugs users in Footscray several years ago now and these risk becoming white elephants as drug users are forced out of the neighbourhood by saturation-style policing.
Research here, in Sydney and other parts of the world shows that simplistic policing solutions to detect drugs only increase the harms like overdose, police violence, Hepatitis C and HIV. Instead, what are required are strategies which include all members of the community: residents, traders, shoppers, governments and drug users alike. Let's stop wasting government resources and start creating neighbourhoods that work for everyone.
Peter Higgs
Kensington Vic
Palestine
The entire Western media takes the side of Israel when talking about anything to do with the Israel/Palestine conflict. There is not a skerrick of information about the fact that Israel is violating international law by being on occupied land. Israel had been in violation of the UN Partition Plan since 1949. Does anyone care that the rights of Palestinians are being infringed? Israel grows as does the pain of those in the way. Look at a map to see the amount of land that Israel had taken from its rightful owners!
Alas, the Palestinians cannot do much about their destroyed homes and families. The US supports Israel to the tune of well over US$3 billion per year. Will our media one day talk with a sense of morality? I hope that one day they will, but I just heard a report on ABC Radio National, and I don't hold much hope.
Ian Cameron
Macquarie, ACT
Wind power
Here is all you ever need to know about why wind power is a far superior option for power generation than nuclear. Third generation nuclear power plants cost between A$1500/kW and A$2200/kW to build and subsequently must be fuelled and decommissioned at extra cost (both in the monetary and environmental sense of the word). Wind turbines cost $1200/kW to build, cost nothing to fuel and have lower operations and maintenance costs than nuclear. To get Australia onto 20% wind power (7500MW of 37500MW) would cost about $9 billion, whereas nuclear would cost $11.2-16.5 billion.
Wind power is quicker and cheaper to build, cheaper to run and unlike nuclear power does not produce nuclear waste or defile Indigenous land.
Zane Alcorn From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, July 26, 2006.
Newcastle, NSW {Abridged]
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