Conrad Black
Conrad Black (who bought Fairfax) is serialising his autobiography in the Australian. Henry "Napalm" Kissinger is a close friend of Conrad, and described, by Conrad, as "a great man". Conrad's prose style is very reminiscent of the style of university sophomore prose of "Napalm" Kissinger. Napoleon's prose has the same clusters of desperately incognate words, the same rhetorical flow with many impressive, but vaguely defined polysyllables, and the same quotes, most of them inappropriate, from "the classics".
On examination, one sees a thesaurus, or three, had been swallowed by a deranged word processor, with "Great Quotations from History", and a philosopher's compendium of wise-cracks, which then throws up kilometres of disorderly, boring narrative. Plus, of course, in both Conrad and "Napalm's", the never ending, but never detailed, "erotic adventures".
Conrad Black's autobiography reminds me of Alf's comment:
"Alf seldom philosophised,
But one day, he said: 'By my troth!
Brains will beat brawn
But bullshit baffles both."
Denis Kevans
Wentworth Falls NSW
Mao Zedong
To mark the hundredth anniversary of Mao Zedong's birth, the Melbourne Age (24/12/93) published an article by Albert Langer.
This article shows that Langer, who was a Maoist student leader in the sixties, is still unable to look critically at Mao and the Cultural Revolution.
He quotes a few of Mao's left-sounding slogans ("It is right to rebel", etc), but does not look at the reality behind the rhetoric.
Mao was part of China's bureaucratic elite and shared in its privileges. However, he fell out with most other Communist Party leaders after the disastrous failure of the so-called Great Leap Forward during the late fifties.
This was a period of bureaucratic voluntarism. Peasant cooperatives were forcibly amalgamated into gigantic communes. At the same time, there was an attempt to boost production by setting absurdly unrealistic targets. The result was such chaos that food production fell drastically and millions of people starved to death.
Mao, as the chief instigator of this fiasco, lost influence within the Communist Party leadership. To make a comeback, he appealed to China's students to support him. He made use of the personality cult that had been built up around him over many years.
He encouraged in the student "rebels" an attitude of fanaticism and intolerance towards any difference of opinion, thereby preventing any real discussion of China's problems. Free discussion was a threat to Mao, since it would have meant criticism of both major factions within the party leadership, but particularly of Mao's responsibility for the Great Leap Forward.
Mao's combination of ultraleft rhetoric with political repression helped to discredit socialism in China. Many people (including former "rebels" who realised they had been manipulated and then discarded by Mao) initially welcomed Deng Xiaoping as a liberator. This illusion was shattered by the Beijing massacre.
Today there is growing discontent with the corruption, unemployment and other evils associated with Deng's pro- capitalist policies. The Chinese people are disillusioned with both Mao's pseudo-left dictatorship and Deng's pro-capitalist regime.
When a renewed socialist upsurge occurs in China, the new movement will be as critical of Mao as of Deng.
Langer's article also indicates his reactionary ideas on a range of other questions. He dismisses concern for the environment as "greenie nature worship".
He describes the campaign against the Gulf War as "bizarre protests against the removal of Iraq from Kuwait". While his logic is unclear, he seems to be saying that we don't have to worry about United States imperialism because it is merely a "paper tiger". Of course it is easy to trivialise the power of imperialism when you are not actually fighting it!
Chris Slee
Melbourne
Scapegoating
Science ecologist David Suzuki was recently quoted as saying that "Living on planet earth in the 1990s is akin to being in a motor vehicle with no brakes, heading towards a brick wall at 200 kph whilst its occupants argued about which seat they should be sitting in."
This is a most apt analogy as Australians begin to debate the current bushfire crisis.
Already we have the Farmers Association and the pro-logging lobby jumping on the bandwagon in an attempt to apportion some of the blame for these fires on the green movement. At a time of such distress and misery for homeowners and families it can only be concluded that this already propaganda run industry is sinking to even dirtier tactics in their cynical campaign to try and discredit the green movement.
We are being led to believe that because "Greenies" want to save forests that it follows they must be responsible for all the fires. One's heart must sink to realise such "Burn the witch" logic still holds fast in this country.
Contrary to accusations by the Farmers Association and the pro-logging lobby, the green movement has never objected to any control burning operations around residential areas. However it must be cautioned that scientists are now finding that repeated burning can actually increase the bushfire risk by replacing the original vegetation with plants that make use of fire as a survival strategy.
What must emerge from this disaster is reality! The reality of a nation exploding in population, pushing its suburbs further and further out along bush ridgelines multiplying greatly the chance of fire either by accident or by the evil design of arsonists. The reality of a profit driven unsustainable timber industry converting wet forest into dry forest. Replacing thick old growth trees with numerous, tightly packed thin trees ripe for fire storms and the reality of a people heating the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels and frying the earth with ozone depleting chemicals.
Lets face it, any scapegoat will do as long as the goat isn't you!
When will Governments, business and individuals realise that it's time to sit down and take a long hard look at themselves and what they are doing to this planet?
There is however one certainty. After these fires have cleared, people will all move back to their homes because despite the risks they love living in the bush. Ask the survivors of Ash Wednesday.
Geoff Thomson
Cremorne NSW
Scared of truth
For years too many now the Suharto regime aided, it would appear, by the shameful collusion of successive Australian Governments, has been trying to have the world believe that the vast majority of East Timorese freely and willingly accepted integration with Indonesia while only a small minority of "radical left extremists" oppose it and would cause trouble trying to thwart the outcome of any attempted referendum of self-determination.
On the contrary, the united East Timorese resistance (FALINTIL), and all who support the East Timorese in their legitimate rights insist that the truth is very much the opposite.
In his 28 page defence plea (which was disallowed in the farcical trial afforded him by the court of the illegal occupation) captured resistance leader Xanana Gusmao said the following: "Who is afraid of a referendum? ... Why are they afraid of a referendum?
"I am not afraid of a referendum! And if today, under international supervision, the Maubere [East Timorese] were to choose integration, I would make a genuine appeal to my compatriots in the bush to lay down their arms and I would offer my head to be decapitated in public!
"Whoever is afraid of the referendum is afraid of the truth!
"Why is there all that military apparatus in front of this disgusting court? Why are their armed soldiers posted along the route [to court] with their arms held at the ready?
"What or who are the Indonesian forces of occupation afraid of? Of the defenceless population, a population that you, Gentlemen, say are satisfied with integration?
"Whom, then, do you wish to terrorize?"
In this, Mr Gusmao challenged the Indonesian regime to a proving of where the truth of the matter really rests and with all confidence pledged his own life as surety on the outcome.
If, through an unhindered or coerced UN sponsored democratic act of self-determination the true East Timorese (post invasion "migrants" excluded) demonstrated a clear choice of integration, then I would not only be totally "stunned", but one of the very first to rest my pen and quit my tongue from the East Timorese independence issue if not the human rights issue!
Peter M. McVean
Action Committee, Australians for a Free East Timor
Darwin