Grief in Bali
The world today is full of grief. The wars, poverty, disease and cultural disruption wrought by imperial policies of plunder, conquest, humiliation and exploitation are producing an ocean of tears and agony.
How many times a day on the TV news do we see funerals, wailing, corpses, maimed bodies, bloated stomachs? And every victim, the millions of them, have husbands or wives or children and friends who grieve from the loss and the pain and, so often, the humiliation of powerlessness before arrogant, armed super-power.
It is sickening then to see the racist, xenophobic and cruel Australian Prime Minister John Howard wrap the grief of those who lost friends and families in the Bali suicide bomb in the Australian flag, and then turn their grief into political capital to be spent on a self-glorifying and self-pitying narrow nationalism in which he can cloak himself electorally. And it is no less sickening to see Labor leader Simon Crean and others join in.
There is only one justification for the politicisation of grief — to turn it into organised struggle against those who created this world of grief. Howard is one of these. His grief is fake and hypocritical. He supports policies that take innocent lives in Iraq; that help wreck the Indonesian (including Balinese) economy and creates more poverty and suffering; that imprison children in concentration camps and promotes racial hatred at home. His grief is fake; only his narrow-mindedness, arrogance and money meanness are genuine.
He and the rest of the political and business elite, in and out of government, are useless in terms of creating any kind of society worthy of human beings — and like all useless things should be thrown away. But that leaves the responsibility with the rest of the people, who have to be awakened to this responsibility.
Max Lane
Jakarta
Howard's dirty war and Bali
Seeing John Howard hugging relatives of the Bali bombing victims was a sickening reminder of Argentine General Galtieri expressing sympathy with the Mothers of the Disappeared in the Plaza de Mayo, when his policies were directly responsible for the deaths of thousands in Argentina's Dirty War.
The Howard government enthusiastically joined Britain and the US in the illegal war [against Iraq], which, as predicted, has resulted in a tragic fiasco. Nearly 200 US lives have been lost since George W. Bush declared the war's end, countless Iraqi lives have been snuffed out, about A$750 million has been sucked out of Australian education, health and welfare.
Iraq is now irradiated with depleted uranium and unexploded ordnance, Islamic jihadists have been inflamed and Australian tourists have been massacred in Bali as a direct result.
Let us hope the Kuta memorial to all those innocent Australians will become the epitaph to a criminally negligent and hubristic government that has consistently dumped human values in favour of profits, prestige and power.
Gareth Smith and Maxine Caron
Byron Bay NSW
Ten Balis a year
In numbers of young people lost, suicides are ten Balis a year, every year. Who are the terrorists here? When will the massed ceremonies of expiation and redemption begin?
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Inadequate aid for East Timor
There is an acute food shortage in much of East Timor, especially in the north-west and the "backblocks" of the country. This follows two years of drought and then floods which destroyed the corn crop. Over 100,000 farmers and their families are having to eat their seed corn, which leaves them nothing to plant, just to survive.
What is the Australian government's response to the appeals of East Timorese leaders? $1 million in food aid. Completely inadequate, especially in the context of Australia's theft of 60% of what is East Timor's oil.
$10 million is the absolute minimum that should go to the East Timorese during this crisis. And that would be just a tiny fraction of what the Howard government is receiving in tax revenue from the stolen oil.
We would like to echo what Wendy Bacon said recently on Radio National: that few real reporting of what is going on in Aceh, you have to go to GLW, and that the mainstream is not reporting East Timor at all.
Keep it up! Viva Timor Leste/Lorosa' e!
Stephen Langford
Secretary Australia East Timor Association
Sydney
Battlers dumped
Some weeks ago, I put in for a tax subsidy for my partner (Foxy) Tokerau Mana-Birch, who is on pain killers for gout and arthritis, and suffers with asthma, angina and is overweight. She got back a letter of refusal on the grounds that she is able to walk 50 metres.
When I explained this to a government officer over the phone he told me that they were the guidelines laid down by the government and there was nothing he could do about it, and she would just have to walk 50 metres and stop for a rest and keep repeating this until she arrived at her destination.
I have also lobbied my state member of parliament, who has so far been unable to get a reply from the minister of transport, but he is still trying; he has been trying for weeks also.
So much for the Labor Party, who has dumped battlers like us, when they are supposed to be a party for the battler.
I may add it costs us $15 for a return taxi fare to the shops.
Ron Bailey
Taree NSW
Tax cuts?
The recent budget surplus has seen the capitalist media campaigning stridently for tax cuts, especially for those on high incomes. We are assured that cuts will benefit the vast majority by stimulating production. This claim, however, is hopelessly at odds with data from the 23 highest-income OECD nations.
In the 1990s, higher-taxing countries had, on average, an almost identical rate of economic growth per capita as lower-taxing countries. Ditto for the 1980s and 1970s. Unemployment rates in the 1990s were similarly unrelated to tax receipts.
Tax levels have little effect on the overall economy but less taxation is strongly associated with more poverty and inequality. Tax in Australia is about eight percentage points of GDP ($60 billion per annum) below typical First World OECD levels.
What the privileged private press propagandists are effectively advocating is an increase in their net incomes at the expense of less-well-off Australians who rely on tax-financed social security, healthcare, education and transport. Don't be fooled by their rhetoric about helping "hard-working battlers" or promises of an economic boom if only we'd "increase incentives".
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
No mandate
It is not very clever of the Prime Minister John Howard to claim a mandate for any legislation, whether it was part of his election manifesto or not. We all know that he is prime minister only because the alternative was Kim Beazley.
In particular, he has no mandate to seek constitutional amendments that remove the power of the Senate to amend bills or block supply.
Col Friel
Alawa NT
Chaos and anarchy
The US, Britain and Australia tried to convince themselves and their gullible public that they were illegally invading Iraq in order to liberate the Iraqi people from tyranny. All they have succeeded in doing is bringing anarchy and destruction to that country.
Just as with the criminal bombing of Vietnam in the 1960s, the US embarked on a massive bombing campaign of Iraq earlier this year. They used horrendous weapons including cluster bombs, which continue to kill and maim innocent Iraqis. Rather than wait for Saddam Hussein to die or the Iraqi people to overthrow his regime, the US and its litter mates — Britain and Australia, embarked on a slaughter justified by lies about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The result has been a wholesale disaster. Thousands of innocent Iraqi people were killed and maimed. The country's infrastructure lies in ruins with guerrilla groups continuing to destroy what remains. The US has set up a puppet Governing Council made up of Iraqi exiles and criminals. This body has no credibility. Its members would be run out of Iraq if it weren't for their US patronage. The spoils of war have been awarded to companies from the victor nations without any consultation with the Iraqi people. Attacks on Coalition forces continue by the day.
The US shunned the United Nations when it unilaterally decided to invade Iraq without provocation. Now there are increasing calls within the US administration for UN members to come to its rescue by sending forces to Iraq. Just as the US changed its story about the reasons for invading Iraq, now it is grovelling for military support in order to justify the unjustifiable.
US troops in Iraq are becoming increasingly agitated about their policing role. Their morale has dropped through the floor. Their supposed hero status has been short lived. They know that the Iraqi people want them to leave.
The Coalition are reaping their just rewards. The US administrator in Iraq, Bremer, continues carpeting on about the progress being made while the Iraqi people watch their country descend into chaos. Well done America!
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow NSW
ALP and FTA
We understand that the ALP has serious reservations about the Free Trade Agreement apparently soon to be concluded with the US. The Progressive Labour Party is completely opposed to the FTA and has made that clear in its submission to the Senate inquiry earlier this year.
Our question is: Does the ALP have a commitment not to honour the treaty if there no parliamentary approval for this treaty and will it make this clear to the public prior to signing? Secondly, will the ALP call for a referendum on the proposed treaty so that the voters have an opportunity to record their position.
In terms of the constitution, parliamentary or popular approval is not required for foreign treaties. The position is similar for engagement in war and we have just experienced the making of such a seriously flawed decision by the Howard government this year. It seems to us that the potentially far reaching nature of an FTA requires that it cannot be left to the government alone to decide on such matters without a clear mandate.
Klaas Woldring From 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ Weekly, October 22, 2003.
Progressive Labour Party
Pearl Beach NSW
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