'Miss Cod Fillet'?
Rose McDonnell's letter (GLW #556) is more an apology for beauty contests than a defence. McDonnell unwittingly exposes the sordid and passive economic and social coercion that motivates participation in such contests.
As for comparison to a lump of meat, would McDonnell herself feel proud of such titles — How about a "Miss T-Bone" or "Miss Rump Steak" or perhaps a "Miss Cod Fillet"?
Citing beauty contests as a way out of social ills ignores the roots of the problems. Or perhaps there are beauty contests for sick octogenarian pensioners — how about a hospital bed for a prize.
Narendra Mohan Kommalapati
Canberra
Senate 'reform'
The Prime Minister has recently resumed his campaign to weaken the Senate. However, his assertion that the minority now has an absolute veto over the majority simply isn't true.
A Senate minority cannot block anything. Furthermore, the Senate better reflects people's votes for parties than does the House of Representatives.
If Mr Howard believes in majority rule, why not turn all decision-making over to public plebiscites? His desire is really for more government power — regardless of popular opinion on any specific issue.
The Senate tends to oppose the government's more ideologically extreme legislation and this protects the vulnerable today. Making it easier to hold a joint parliamentary sitting where the government can override the Senate would probably be harmful. Fortunately, most Australians (not an overbearing minority) are likely to veto the idea.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
Strengthening the two-party tyranny
The two constitutional amendment proposals put forward by PM Howard only aim to strengthen the power of the government of the day, and that of the major parties at the expense of the Senate and the minor parties.
It is particularly disturbing that the ALP has sympathy with his second proposal provided there would be fixed four-year parliaments and the existing Senate power to block supply would be removed. The latter "reform" would ensure the total emasculation of the Senate.
Given that, at present, there is no other way of recalling an erring government in the Australian political system, a serious deficiency in the light of recent government behaviour, it is far more dangerous to remove that ultimate safeguard than to leave it there.
The ALP seems to be unable to look beyond the Coalition's abuse when blocking supply in 1975. There are numerous other reforms urgently required to modernise the electoral and political systems in Australia, including the Senate, before trying to circumvent the need for double dissolutions by means of deceptive justifications.
Klaas Woldring
National secretary, Progressive Labour Party
Pearl Beach NSW
End Israel's occupation
How can anyone be expected to seriously believe the repeated statements by Israel and its supporters that to stop Palestinian violence, Israel must build a wall, that Arafat has to go into exile or that the Palestinian Authority has to repress and disarm the militants. These are all Israeli distractions from the real crux of the problem.
The only effective way to decrease Palestinian resistance and resolve the Palestinian issue is for Israel to stop the occupation, withdraw from the Palestinian territories and stop building illegal settlements there. The Palestinian violence is a reaction to the Israeli occupation.
Any other so-called solutions that negate this central fact are just pathetic side issues and delays while suffering on both sides continues.
Steven Katsineris
Hurstbridge Vic
Competition
The revamping of the Howard cabinet means that many departments now have new ministers casting around for policy options. I have been approached by some of them for help in reinvigorating their areas of responsibility.
Salamander Vanstone would like you to suggest exciting mutual obligations she can impose upon refugees. I have suggested to Salamander that all asylum seekers will have to provide evidence that they have Amnesty International badges before they will be allowed into the immigration camps at Baxter, Nauru, Christmas Island, Derby and Port Hedland.
My old mate Pillock Ruddock is on top of his new portfolio. He assures me that all those Straylians who enjoyed watching him stick the boot into asylum seekers can be assured that this time they will be the centre of his attention when he is thinking of things to do to people.
Phil Reith rang the Phoney Abbott last night and offered to supply him with hospital-trained balaclava-wearing nurses, who will be accompanied by Dobermans.
If you have any further ideas they would be appreciated. I was not able to contact Grey Patterson. I heard she had lost her health but gained a family. A new boy Heaven Andrews has had to revise his earlier strong opposition to euthanasia, opting now to allow employers to make decisions as to which disruptive employees to euthanise — he felt by handing such functions over to the private sector that this would lift a huge weight off the government's shoulders.
Malignant Brough will be assisting the minister for defence and is already off to a good start. He is determined to cut out waste and from now on soldiers below the rank of Field Marshall will be paid at the work-for-the-dole rate. He is working on plans to end duplication by making the airborne division share one parachute between two paratroopers. Please keep your suggestions rolling in to the new Howard ministers.
John Tomlinson
Brisbane
Government by 'comedians'
In my youth and young adulthood there were three comedians whom I occasionally saw at the "flicks" or heard on the radio. The American pair were Bud Abbott and Lou Costello and in Britain, Frankie Howard. We used to think they were funny generally.
Now in Australia, we have three federal politicians with similar surnames. From time to time they say quite comical things, if the subject wasn't so serious — so life threateningly serious, very stupidly comic.
Take the current situation — unemployment in general; amongst the young in particular; and the tendency to blame them for not being able to find work, even to the extent of penalising them.
The modern three are all proponents of the current fetishes — privatisation, rationalisation, both of which have their aim to (even if not admitted) reduce the number of people in the employ of the organisation being privatised/rationalised — Telstra, the banks, the railways. Our modern and very with-it society of course has to keep introducing machinery; electronics etc so that less/fewer people (they're costly) need be employed.
Our local council bought the latest "gizmo" truck/machine to repair pot holes in the bitumen: it has a driver only. However, the two people made redundant are employed part-time to be flat men fore and aft when the machine is working. Then there are takeovers and amalgamations which usually have the same effect; fewer people doing the same or even more work; witness the airline industry.
Our three comedians are currently in charge of our negotiators in the current and final round of the "free trade" agreement with the USA. I'll bet the original Abbott and Costello couldn't have been involved in a more predictable and laughable outcome, in which Australia is stripped down to its underpants whilst the "Good ol' Uncle Sam" walks away with the spoils. For example, limits on our steel, meat, etc, entering the US, whilst we pay more for medications to US drug manufacturers and let their seeds and food, which have had their genes tampered with, enter Australia unhampered.
What really upsets me is that just this day the comedians in their various ways say there are jobs "if only the unemployed would look".
That brings me to the fact that the population at large in any country are the customers for all of the goods and services which are available in that country. Each time someone is made redundant, or has their pay reduced, there will be a reduction in that person's ability to buy once they've used their redundancy money or savings. As spending money is reduced, fewer goods and services are bought. So the building industry lays off a few workers, who in turn can buy less.
It's not only Australia with comedians as leaders, of course, but it's about time we stopped cheering and clapping ours — they're not funny!
There has to be a better way. Give the comedians and their fetishes the thumbs down.
Jim Knight
Kangaroo Creek NSW
[Abridged.]
Whistle blown on Blair
Robin Cook, the former foreign secretary of England, has reaffirmed what most people already thought about PM Tony Blair. That he lied to his own country about the reasons why Britain attacked Iraq.
Cook's published diaries reveal that he spoke with Blair before the war commenced in March, and Blair informed him that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were so well hidden that they couldn't possibly be deployed quickly. They weren't an effective threat as Blair claimed and continues to claim.
If Robin Cook is telling the truth then this is the first real evidence to suggest that Blair was not simply ignorant of the facts, he was deliberately misleading his country in order to justify the unlawful and unprovoked attack on Iraq.
Blair is a cunning and astute politician. He takes pride in being able to convince others of the righteousness of his actions. Blair was informed of his own Joint Intelligence Committee's report prior to the attack. This report clearly revealed that attacking Iraq was more likely to increase international terrorism and the risk that any weapons of mass destruction might fall into renegade hands. He ignored this advice because he and the US President had already decided that they were going to proceed.
Blair failed the most basic test of a decent man. He lied, and in so doing he placed the lives of others in jeopardy. He failed to use his substantial influence with the US president to convince him that attacking Iraq was the wrong thing to do. Blair will never be able to make amends for what he has done, but the very least he could do is resign!
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow NSW
[Abridged.]
Solidarity needed
On March 20, the day after the war on Iraq began, the Berkeley Stop the War Coalition, like many other anti-war groups across the United States, held a demonstration on campus to protest the war and demonstrate our opposition to the military policies of the Bush administration. Thousands of students walked out of their classes at noon to join us on Sproul Plaza in what university administrators called the largest protest in decades at the University of California, Berkeley.
The protest was inspiring, all the more so because it was a part of an international movement to oppose war. During the course of the demonstration, several hundred students peacefully marched into Sproul Hall, the university administration building, and held a peaceful sit-in.
The demands were simple: declare Baghdad University a sister school to UC Berkeley as a show of opposition to war; cease monitoring international students on campus; and stop fee hikes and wage cuts during the course of war.
The administration refused each of these demands and arrested 119 protesters. All criminal charges were dropped against the protesters. And for all but three students, student conduct charges were also dropped.
But three students now face student conduct charges that would make it impossible for them to protest on campus and would punish them for doing what was right. While the university has offered community service as a kind of plea bargain, it carries with a probationary warning that would make it impossible for student activists to protest again on campus.
The irony of it is that today, with no weapons of mass destruction, no proven threat of an attack from Iraq, increasing costs of the occupation, growing numbers of civilian and military casualties and fatalities, continued attacks on civil rights, the protesters have been proven correct — the war on Iraq was wrong.
And, since the war started, not only have fees been raised for students and wages and jobs been cut for employees at the University of California, but international students are now required to register with federal agencies as a condition of enrollment.
And still, the university is going to prosecute student protesters.
On October 14, the university will hold formal hearings to bring student conduct charges against the three students — some of the most prominent activists in the coalition.
We believe that these charges are not only unfair (in that they single out three people from over a hundred to prosecute) but are also unjust. They are designed to intimidate students and political activists and to chill speech.
They also represent an attempt to attack one of the most well known anti-war student organizations in the country in order to make it easier to attack other anti-war students organizations across the country.
We need your help.
Please take a few moments and write to the Chancellor and the Student Judicial Affairs Office (addresses and phone information below) and tell them that you believe that these penalties are unwarranted and unjust.
Especially at Berkeley, where there are memorials to Free Speech Movement of the 1960s all over campus (the Mario Savio steps and the Free Speech Movement Caf‚), these kinds of attacks on free speech and civil disobedience are not only an attempt to roll-back the activist gains won on this campus, but also in defiance of the university's mission to promote free speech and debate.
Please do email us at <ucbstopthewar@hotmail.com> with any correspondence that you send so that we can keep a record of the letters that the administration receives.
Also, please sign our online petition at .
We urgently need your help. Please lend your support to anti-war student activists and activists who are fighting for social justice by letting the administration know that their actions are not supported by members of the community, students, alumni, faculty, and staff.
Please contact:
Chancellor Robert Berdahl MAIL: 200 California Hall #1500 Berkeley, CA 94720-1500. Phone: (510) 642-7464 Fax: (510) 643-5499
Assistant Chancellor John Cummins email: <jcummins@uclink4.berkeley.edu>. Mail: Office of the Chancellor 200 California Hall Berkeley, CA 94720-1500. Phone: (510) 642-7516. Fax: (510) 643-5499.
Student Judicial Affairs Officer Neal Rajmaira, Email: <osc@uclink4.berkeley.edu>.
Berkeley Stop the War Coalition
California USA
From Â鶹´«Ã½ Weekly, October 15, 2003.
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