Join the wharfies' picket
Bravo to those who did the hard work behind the recent Asia-Pacific Solidarity Conference. It was great to see it full to capacity. The speakers on the morning I went, especially Mari Alkitiri, were an inspiration. It deserved mainstream reporting.
At least the meeting with the locked out Patrick wharf workers at Darling Harbour was on Radio National. One of my regrets from living in England is that I did not support workers in a similar situation to the wharf workers now. During the Grunwick dispute in the late '70s Indian women were locked out of a film processing plant for protesting about the wretched conditions they worked under. Non-union workers were bussed in. It would have been easy to travel across London with others and offer moral and financial support.
Do not let the moment pass. Go and meet the wharf workers.
Congratulations to all concerned, you bear out the words of Noam Chomsky: "If you go to one demonstration and then go home, that's something, but the people in power can live with that. What they can't live with is sustained pressure that keeps building organisations that keep doing things, people that keep learning lessons from the last time and doing it better the next time."
Australia East Timor Association
Sydney
Tontons Macoutes alive and well
So Patrick can apparently flout two laws — the Federal Court's injunction to stay the stevedores' sackings, and Howard's law that no one can be sacked for belonging to a union. Very little is now said about this illegal behaviour, and we are expected to forget all about it. If you have money, you can get away with anything.
Correspondents fling around wild accusations that stevedores are paid like millionaires (Skase, Bond?) but no proof is given, no figures or dates or statistics are ever cited. The federal police have apparently refused to take part in this dirty business, so it must be the NSW police that blinded the desperate stevedores. Of course Patrick deny the used of Mace. Oscar Wilde said: "I never believe anything unless it has first been denied by the papers." I never believe anything unless it has been denied by Patrick.
So welcome to Thatcher's Britain, Pinochet's Chile, Duvalier's Haiti and Hitler's Germany! It can't happen here? It can and has.
Scab labour: remember you won't get work-cover in an accident, and you're not allowed to sue your employer. No one will be surprised if Howard's disastrous actions lead to violence in the home, and suicides.
St Kilda, Vic.
Pig Iron Bob
The Weekend Australian, April 18-19, has an article "Reith anger forged in pig iron protest". My husband and I both supported the campaign of "No pig iron for Japan!" because we were convinced that war was coming and we were aware that the pig iron would build the Japanese war machine.
Menzies earned his title "Pig Iron Bob". The consequences were disastrous not only for Australia but for untold millions.
Remember Japan's invasion of China and the "rape of Nanking" before World War Two? My feelings on war were the direct result of a remark by my mother when we saw and heard a legless returned soldier of the first world war sitting in the gutter in Pitt St. We stopped and she gave me a coin to put in his begging bowl and remarked as we walked away, "Somehow, Jean, it doesn't seem right for them to have gone through all that and come back and beg on the streets."
Balmain NSW.
Morgan and death
Hugh Morgan, Western Mining Corporation chief, said in the Australian (April 6, 1998): "I love the land. I'm connected to it as a miner."
Yes, Hugh, but not quite as connected to the land as the 13 miners who have died in your mines in West Australia in the past 12 months.
Wentworth Falls, NSW.
Congratulations
Congratulation to the Democratic Socialist Party for putting its money where its mouth is and organising a conference — the Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference — where more than 60 delegates from Asia met during the catastrophic crisis in Asia.
Austinmer NSW
Foul language
Ben Courtice (GLW # 310) misconstrues the central thrust of my denunciation of the use of foul language in Â鶹´«Ã½.
Secular language is welcome, indeed necessary in a socialist publication. Socialists should seek to break down all religious teaching which calls on its devotees to passively accept the world as it is and wait for a better life after death.
But this is skirting the issue. It is not the swearing which necessarily offends. Being offended by swearing is not the point. The point was, and is, if one swears during an argument, one will lose the argument. It is as simple as that.
Those who swear while arguing cannot advance their argument. Once you swear, you are automatically disqualified from participating any further in the debate. I contend that Â鶹´«Ã½ in its entirety is an argument for socialism, and we cannot afford to disqualify ourselves from such an important debate.
Wellington Point Qld
[Abridged.]
Arief Budiman
Edwin Gozal writes (GLW #313) that Indonesian anti-Suharto activist/academic Arief Budiman was anti-IMF and anti-capitalism before Indonesia's current crisis.
Was he? Ever? Where?
I'd like Gozal to cite just one instance where Budiman was ever anti-capitalist, in Gozal's sense — i.e. wanting to overthrow capitalism.
Surry Hills NSW
Nietzsche bashed
I was annoyed to read the Phil Shannon review in GLW 313. While the article itself was eloquent, Shannon has fallen into the "Nietzsche bash".
Though I do not claim to be an "expert" on Fredrich Nietzsche, in my reading of him I have yet to find any statements suggesting the superiority of the Anglo Saxon race. While Nietzsche had respect and love for German "high culture", he was never anti-Semitic or a believer in any form of race superiority.
All Nietzsche did was warn about human nature. He saw it for what it is, neither good or bad, and he questioned those values. Will to power might be extreme, but so is Marxism in its original form.
His superiority idea of the Ãœ²ú±ð°ù³¾±ð²Ô²õ³¦³ó (rough translation "superman") was an idea of a pure and authentic individual. Individual and not society was his main concern. This was his utopian idea and had nothing to do with racism. The original ideas of Nietzsche were corrupted by his anti-Semitic sister, Elisibeth, and later by Hitler through his association with her.
Some may argue that I am being pedantic about this and perhaps I am, however I grow weary of people falling for the classic misinterpretation of Nietzsche and other "existential" thinkers. Nietzsche has been misunderstood since he wrote his ideas and it is time for people to try and understand what he was really on about.
I urge everyone to actually read Nietzsche before judging him an anti-Semite and a madman. If you read him and still don't like him, fair enough, but give the man a chance before falling for the cliche.
Townsville Qld
Spiritualism I
I'm with Allen Myers, of course ("Spiritualism", GLW #312). For sure, I'd prefer to be flown by a pilot who steers by computer rather than the I Ching.
However, I'd be an even happier flyer if the pilot's pre-flight check included an I Ching reading. This might, on a relevant occasion, send him or her on a more thorough search than usual of the front wheel well for the spanner left by a careless mechanic. If unnoticed, it would cause the wheel to jam in the up position on retraction after takeoff.
A computer is appropriate technology for some circumstances; the I Ching for others. As with any other application of the mind, spiritual or material, it can be abused to exploit people.
An example of exploiting materialism is the work of professor Cyril Burt. He got the title "father of English psychological testing" and a knighthood for his work. He "proved" among other things that intelligence was inherited.
It took 30 years to show he had blatantly falsified data to arrive at his "proofs". It took just about the same time to show that Stalin had blatantly falsified data to "prove" he was governing the USSR on the basis of dialectical materialism. Both sets of data are still used for nefarious purposes.
By its nature, I can support successful use of the I Ching only by anecdotal evidence — the kind that failed to impress the French Academy of Sciences re meteorites. The "hard" sciences claim to rely on stronger proofs. Conclusions at their leading edges seem to be justified in some apparently unmaterialist ways these days.
I find it ironically amusing that GLW seems often to acknowledge Aboriginal-type spirituality (for instance "Greens issue urgent Wik warning", GLW #312) while "exposing" all European and eastern types. Some kind of reverse discrimination?
Brompton SA
Spiritualism II
What has "spirituality-bashing" to do with fighting for human and environmental rights? Why does the subjective intolerance of the ill-informed clog the precious left-wing political space of Â鶹´«Ã½, alienating readers who gain self-knowledge from "Tarot cards, astrology and I Ching", while also passionately fighting for compassion and justice?
Incidentally, monotheism has done more to promote genocide (from Semitic Canaanites to Semitic Palestinians and Iraqis), environmental exploitation, hierarchies and sexism than ever the Tarot has managed to do!
To Paul Benedek and Allen Myers, I reply there is plenty of convincing evidence in support of these "gateways to the collective unconscious". I could provide evidence in support, but I believe Â鶹´«Ã½ is better utilised in "fighting the power".
I quote Joseph Goodavage's response to a 1975 "parabashing" campaign, comprised of scientists, including 18 Nobel laureates: "the most interesting fact is that of the original 186 signers of the anti-astrological manifesto, none of these gentlemen had ever made a serious study of astrology — or ever intended to". Sounds like prejudice to me.
Mt Lawley WA.