Save Che!
According to the front page of the April 5 Blue Mountains Gazette, the Blue Mountains City Council (BMCC) is attempting to force the owners of a Wentworth Falls private dwelling to destroy two large murals, including one of Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara. The murals, visible from the Great Western Highway, were painted by aerosol artist Dan Lualdi with the permission of the building's owner.
The council claims the order to destroy the art was made after it received a complaint from "a resident". Lualdi has described the order by the BMCC, which has a Labor mayor, as "mass censorship" and points out that he has had many positive reactions to the giant portraits.
While one anonymous conservative "resident" may find a big Che confronting, I think all of us who find his image inspiring need to speak out against this blatant political censorship and also defend what Che stood for. That it is Che that the "resident" and the BMCC find objectionable seems to be confirmed by a council spokesperson, who told the Gazette: "The owner could legitimately have a different mural painted on the wall."
Dan Lualdi pointed to the hypocrisy of the council's decision: "There are billboards everywhere that are sexist and offensive, yet these two murals are deemed offensive by somebody and ordered to be removed. I just don't get it and I am interested in what other people think."
Well let's tell the council what we think. Send an email to the BMCC at <council@bmcc.nsw.gov.au> demanding that the order for the murals to be painted over be rescinded. Send a letter to the Blue Mountains Gazette at <editorial.bmgazette@ruralpress.com> explaining why you oppose the ban on Che's portrait. Please send copies to <bluemountains@socialist-alliance.org>.
Terry Townsend
Blackheath, NSW
Marriage
Kim Linden (Write On, GLW #662) writes: "The issue of the reasons behind the historic and continued state sponsorship of marriage (or its equivalent) seems to have dropped off the agenda. I am concerned about the absence of this debate..."
Linden is incorrect about the absence of this debate. These issues of the relationship of marriage to capitalism, sexism and the state, and whether or not we should campaign for queer marriage, have been debated throughout the campaign. We paid particular attention to it at the 2004 Queer Collaborations conference. I am glad that Linden has brought this debate to the pages of Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly.
It is a correct Marxist analysis that marriage is linked private property. Not only that, marriage is the key institution under capitalism that facilitates the subordination of women in the nuclear family. Under capitalism women are "baby machines" who produce the next generation of workers.
Let's get this right — there is very little support for same sex-marriage among bourgeois politicians. Both the Liberal Party and the ALP supported the marriage ban. A small minority of Liberal MPs are calling for civil unions now, not because same-sex marriage is in their interest, but because they are cracking under pressure (the same thing happened with refugees).
The reason why bourgeois politicians don't want queer marriage is because it exposes the institution of marriage. There is nothing "normal" or "natural" about women being subordinated to men under a contract with the capitalist state. Queer marriage shows that there is nothing "normal" or "natural" about heterosexual marriage.
Yes, we need to campaign for de facto rights, polyamorous rights, and so forth. At the moment we are focusing on queer marriage because that is what was banned by the federal government. Queer marriage is interlinked with these broader relationship rights. The legal recognition of same sex couples in Tasmania and Western Australia also came with more legal rights for de facto couples. The Christian right is terrified that queer marriage sets a precedent for the legal recognition of polyamorous marriage.
Yes, ultimately we want to either get rid of the institution of marriage, or to radically reshape it. (Engels said it will be up to the people of the future to decide). But to get rid of the institution of marriage, or radically reshape it, you need a revolution. And we're not there yet in Australia. How do you make a revolution? You engage masses of people in struggle. How do you do that? You take on the issues that affect their lives, like queer marriage.
Farida Iqbal
(Via email)
Little Britain
As they say there is no explanation for taste as Lachlan Malloch (Write On, GLW #663) confirms. Malloch attacks me for my take on the television series Little Britain. I think this is fine as I so often try to review items that don't normally fall under political scrutiny and I don't necessarily make a habit of reviewing by numbers — something that I find the left is far too prone to when it comes to culture. I dislike tick-box reviews that will seek only to judge film or literature by criteria determined by political platform alone.
Malloch forgets that I am not forcing him to watch the program. I am instead merely offering my own opinion. He also forgets that this is a signed review and that Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly has not in the least editorialised on the topic — and never will.
So why rail against the paper for publishing it? Does he consider that items like Little Britain should not be considered in its pages — that the paper is somehow cheapening its role by reviewing items of popular culture which seem, superficially at least, not very political?
I strongly disagree.
The thrust of my review was to promote Little Britain as an example of grostesque and parody which I suggested had a strong tradition both in literature and in carnival. I see this tradition as an important burlesque that has so often been harnessed to turn the world, at least momentarily upside, down to make, often unconsciously, a political point.
The irony of Malloch's protest is that I had shared my view of Little Britain on the Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly Discussion List prior to writing the published review and had drawn on that fruitful exchange to develop my critique. It therefore comes as no surprise to me that there are some who object to my review. But hey, that's what debate is all about ain't it?
Dave Riley
Brisbane
NPT violation
At the end of his article "China, India: end all uranium exports" (GLW #663), Jim Green wrote: "South Korea has been a customer for Australian uranium since 1986. In 2004, it disclosed information about a range of activities that violated its NPT commitments — uranium enrichment from 1979-81, the separation of small quantities of plutonium in 1982, uranium enrichment experiments in 2000 and the production of depleted uranium munitions from 1983-87."
Only the last listed activity violated South Korea's obligations under the 1970 nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which allows signatories that do not already have nuclear weapons to research, produce and use nuclear materials — including enriched uranium — for peaceful purposes.
However, South Korea's failure until November 2004 to disclose to the UN's International Atomic Energy Agency the other activities meant prior to this it was in breach of its obligations under the additional protocol to its 1975 NPT safeguards agreement with the IAEA. Under the additional protocol — which Seoul signed on June 21, 1999, and which entered into force on February 19, 2004 — South Korea was required to disclose all of its activities with fissionable nuclear materials since it signed its safeguards agreement.
The distinction is important because the US has based its push for international economic sanctions against Iran on the claim that Iran has violated its "NPT obligations" by having been late in providing full disclosure of all its nuclear activities under the additional protocol that the IAEA drew up in 1997, and which Iran agreed in 2003 to observe but has not ratified.
Doug Lorimer
Sydney
Blair
British PM Tony Blair's recent speech to federal parliament was long on internationalist rhetoric. But why has he devoted so much time and money to supposedly anti-terrorist measures when global poverty kills thousands of times more people than terrorism?
Iraq is now rife with terrorists. And the allegedly humanitarian Mr Blair supported war because of Iraq's supposed weapons, not to free Iraqis from Saddam Hussein's oppression.
The selfishness of Westerners urgently needs to be challenged; however, aspiring internationalists need to (a) avoid counter-productive interventions and (b) get their priorities right.
The long-term consequences of wars are always unpredictable and much suffering is inevitably inflicted. As economist Jeffrey Sachs has argued in The End of Poverty, there are many non-violent ways for affluent nations to help disadvantaged ones. More anti-malaria mosquito nets and fresh water, and fewer wars, perhaps, Mr Blair?
Brent Howard
Rydalmere, NSW
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, April 12, 2006.
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