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A development parable The World Bank decides to sponsor a developmental project in a Third World country. The project initially forcibly removes the peasants from land. A small wealthy group of neo-entrepreneurs/farmers move in to grow a cash crop for export. They are loaned the money by an international financial institution. They purchase all the fertilisers/pesticides/equipment from a multinational corporation. They employ a few workers. The crop starts to bring in money (an economic miracle) which is spent to pay off the debt. Unfortunately the cash crop can't be eaten, nor will it feed the peasants who no longer have a locally produced food supply. They must buy expensive imported food but don't have the money. What little the exploited peasant is paid is not enough to adequately feed his/her malnourished family. As many other developmental projects have also been told to produce the same cash crop, its value plunges on the world market. Yet the country still has to pay the interest on the borrowings. The creditor decides to raise the interest on the loan. The "enterprise" is bankrupted. The creditor gives out another loan to help pay a portion of the ballooning interest on the debt. The initial loan has now doubled, and the size of the interest repayments have also increased. As the original cash crop is no longer profitable, the creditor suggests another developmental project and lends the farmer more money. This project only requires a little capital machinery. The farmer becomes a forester and starts to supply the world with a unique and rare type of timber. He makes a little money, but degrades the environment. More interest payments are made, until the forester is hit with a double whammy: the market collapses and the huge stockpile of timber can't be sold, and the forester runs out of forest. The creditor wants his interest payments and devises an even newer developmental project which involves the acceptance of toxic waste from richer countries. The poor, starving people are even more desperate. A term often used to describe the exploitative antics of the British Empire in India is "imperialist". Mainstream commentators have replaced this with "developmental" to describe the antics of the Global Financial Institutions in the 3rd World.
Mark Dullow
Jannali NSW
[Edited for length.] Uranium Claims by a spokesperson for Energy Resources Australia (ERA) that Australian uranium exports to France are used solely for peaceful purposes ignore two obvious facts. Firstly, even if not directly processed for use in nuclear weapons, the uranium after use as fuel in nuclear power stations is then re-processed for military use. Secondly, France is a major producer and exporter of military hardware. Exocet missiles and Mirage jet fighters are examples. The factories that produce these and other weapons of human destruction are powered by electricity produced in France's nuclear power stations. This energy production contributes in large measure to France's military capabilities, including the capability of suppressing liberation movements in its Pacific colonies. So exporting uranium to France maintains its ability to conduct nuclear tests in our neighbourhood.
Col Friel
Alawa NT Fluoridation There are alarming instances of outrageous laws concerning fluoridation. In November 1994 the Victorian Parliament passed an amendment to the Fluoridation Act by changing the Constitution to stop the Supreme Court of Victoria from hearing cases against Artificial Fluoridation. If you are poisoned by Fluoride in Victoria, tough luck, there is no protection under the law. The Tasmanian Government in 1995 passed a Bill through the Lower House to prohibit the holding of meetings on the subject of Fluoridation. This included private, public, councils, legal parties and schools in Tasmania. Called the Consequential Amendments Bill, it was later withdrawn but is being reworded. Outside of Tasmania, no outcry, no boycotts, why? Health Departments Australia-wide barrel along with the attitude of, "if we win we win, but if we lose we change the laws". A draconian law was enacted in NSW in 1989. A Council cannot cease Fluoridation of its own water supply unless it gets permission from the Health Department. There is small hope the department will allow this to happen so a Council therefore has to make a decision between betraying its Ratepayers, or breaking a questionable law. Sodium Fluoride is added to NSW Council's water supplies solely as a medication unlike Chlorine which is added to treat the water. Australia is a signatory to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (1966). This UN law states that, "no one shall be subjected without his consent to medical or scientific experimentation". The Health Department cannot produce one double blind scientific study which proves absolutely the safety and efficacy of fluoridation. Fluoridation is a violation of the law of Civil Rights.
Thérèse Mackay
Port Macquarie NSW
[Edited for length.] Bougainville and CRA [The following letter was also sent to the Weipa industrial site committee secretary, the United Mine Workers Union and the ACTU assistant secretary.] We wish to express our solidarity with you in your fight against the anti-union tactics and drive of the CRA mining company. The Bougainville people have suffered terribly because they have dared to say "no" to CRA/RTZ. As you no doubt know CRA/RTZ/BCL (all one with different hats on) forced the people of Central Bougainville, over their strongest objection, off their land in order to dig out the copper and gold at Panguna. The mine destroyed not only the land of the people living there, but CRA simply threw the tailings into the river systems, polluting the entire Jaba Valley all the way to the sea. After the local people protested in vain at the destruction of the environment and the ruthless exploitation ($3 billion profit, $3 million to the land owners) the people of Bougainville finally lost patience and shut down the mine in 1988/89. The Australia and Papua New Guinea governments brought in riot police and then the PNG Army and Australian pilots flying Iroquois gunships imposed a total blockade on the island against the people of Bougainville. Although there is almost no news about Bougainville in the mainstream media, the war, the blockade and killing continues. All to get this highly profitable mine back for CRA.
Vikki John
National coordinator of the Bougainville Freedom Movement
Sydney Trotsky Doug Lorimer (GLW #209) raises two issues concerning the historical legacy of Trotsky arising from my review (GLW #208)of Mandel's new book on Trotsky. First, Doug argues that Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution was not implemented by the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and quotes Lenin to this effect. Trading Lenin quotes at twenty paces probably won't settle the issue but Lenin's position on the separation of the bourgeois from the socialist revolutions in Russia underwent many modifications up to 1917. In assessing the counter-revolutionary nature of the Russian capitalist class, the revolutionary vigour of the working class and the favourable prospects for international revolution, the old formulas lost their clarity. They were blown apart by Lenin's provocative April Theses and by his support for dissolving the Constituent Assembly, the organ of bourgeois rule, in favour of transferring all power to the organs of direct workers' rule, the soviets. The transition between the bourgeois and socialist revolutions was the difference between February and October, as "uninterrupted", as "permanent", as "Trotskyist" as you can get in the revolutionary calendar. Second, Doug argues that Trotsky's support for outlawing other parties, banning factions within the Communist Party, and restriction of trade union independence, was necessary, temporary and preserved working class power. Trotsky's post-Civil War policy, however, though briefly held, of turning the unions into state organs in a workers' state that was seriously deformed by bureaucratism, was indefensible (Lenin said as much) despite Trotsky's later unstinting support for trade union independence. The tragedy of the ban on parties and factions was that the justification for this — sacrificing formal democracy to save the Revolution — though warranted during the Civil War and to some extent after it, smoothed the path to bureaucratic control by Stalin who applied the same justification against Trotsky's fight for working class democracy which he took up so courageously in 1923. Trotsky (and the other Bolshevik leaders) were unprepared for the post-Civil War situation of a working class too exhausted to exercise its own self-rule. Trotsky struggled to the best of his great ability as a Marxist revolutionary to balance his ideals against this reality but this does not mean dismissing his failings as the mere fabrications of politically-challenged anti-Leninists.
Phil Shannon
Curtin ACT Tax office bias The Sydney Morning Herald of November 1, 1995 quotes "Omsbudsman attack tax office wealth bias". One would think that with a Labor government in power such flagrant examples of understanding for the rich by the tax office, where it appears that Westfield Holdings can save $25 million in tax, penalties and interest would not happen. Contrast that with action against a disabled pensioner who, unknowingly owed the taxation office $310 because tax had not been withheld from wages from temporary work. The ATO even garnished her wages of $300 to recover debt. Butterworths Tax Bulletin apparently provided the information. What with the closing down of the Investigators program which exposed so much of the shonky deals that go on, and all the corruptness highlighted by WA Inc. one would think a Labor-oriented government would be flat out dealing with fraud and corruption and mean spirited attack on workers.
Jean Hale
Balmain NSW. Friendship needed I need a real friend who I can be a life-time friend to. Age makes no difference nor race.
Freddie Lee Williams 033405
PO Box 221-43-1193
Union Correctional Inst, A-1
Raiford, Florida 32083 USA.