Free trade
The policy of free trade and the free movement of capital, pursued around the world during the last decade, has been part of a Class War by the rich against the poor, with the middle class sitting on the fence enjoying the benefits.
Economic Rationalism has not been merely a gross mistake by well-meaning economic philosopher kings in university and bureaucratic ivory towers. Instead, it has been a deliberate counter-revolution by the very rich, the capitalist class who own big business, against the social democracy movement of the 1960s and 70s, which had redistributed wealth and power downwards into the middle and working classes. The "rational" economists were tools and accomplices of this counter-revolution.
A decade or more of New Right "internationalism" has seen a widening gap between rich and poor, and reduced foreign aid. This "internationalism" means removing the restraints on multinational companies: in effect, "deregulation". Rather than "internationalism", this is "transnationalism": rule by a minute capitalist class spread over a number of "world cities", through their transnational companies.
"Transnationalism" leads not to equality but to poverty and exploitation, the loss of control over decisions affecting one's own life. It preserves the facade of democracy but, through control of the media by the capitalist class, is instead oligarchic: fundamentally anti-democratic. But the polarisation of wealth has grown so great that we are now in a great Depression, which some predict will be the end of Capitalism.
This crisis has not been brought about by the Left; the Left has been on the sideline for the last decade. No, the crisis has arisen within the capitalist financing system itself, as detailed by John Hotson on his recent tour. What is the Left doing in response to this crisis? Half of it is moping about the fall of the Eastern Bloc; the other half has its hand out asking for more welfare. What it should be doing is working out an alternative economic system; not in the role of Helpless Victim, but in the role of Responsible Manager. Generating hate for the oppressors is counter-productive, and so is violent revolution. Our century has had enough of both of these.
Peter Myers
Watson ACT
[Edited for length.]
A nuclear Nuremberg?
US revelations that nuclear experimentation on unwitting humans was done should not surprise us. Medical aid and even water were denied to Hiroshima victims because US medical research teams wanted an unsullied picture of radiation effects on humans.
During the Gulf War thousands of soldiers and civilians (including children) in Kuwait and Iraq were exposed to radiation from the 40 tons of armour piercing shells tipped with radioactive depleted uranium (DU) used by the US. The US General Accounting Office's report "Operation Desert Storm" makes it clear that the dangers were fully understood, but were not communicated to the troops because "DU related health risks are greatly outweighed by the risks of combat".
The US Defence Nuclear Agency report "1987 Nuclear Accident Response Capability Listing" states that there are 466 nuclear accident response teams in 16 countries (in Australia?), which routinely exercise with radioactive radium 223 and thorium 232 in nuclear accident simulations (Independent, 12.10.87)> How many unprotected people have been exposed and what the consequences are for their health is not disclosed.
Referring to the dialogue between the Athenians and the Melians in Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, de Santillana notes that one can spot in the argument "a cold, brilliant, scientific cruelty, not of the passions but of the rational intellect, the devilish element which runs through history isolated in its pure form." This aptly describes Nazi practices: how tragic for us all that it so perfectly fits the nuclear powers. A nuclear Nuremberg Trial is long overdue.
Gareth W.R. Smith
O'Connor ACT
Native Title Bill
The Native Title Bill recently passed by the Senate is a Bill designed to deprive the Aboriginal people of their just rights. It is not a Bill to help the Aboriginal people it is a Bill to hinder them.
While it secures all existing land titles for the whites it forces the Aboriginal people to beg the courts for land that rightfully belongs to them. It is a mean, selfish, one-sided Bill to deprive the Aboriginal people of their just entitlement.
Aboriginal leaders who hailed the Native Title Bill as a great achievement are going to be sadly disillusioned.
If this Bill was designed to help the Aboriginal people they would not have to beg the courts of Australia for land. It should be granted to them by the Government as a right.
The laws of this country are made by the white rulers to serve their best interest. The Native Title Bill is no exception.
The rulers of this country have already proved how insincere they are by introducing a Native Title Bill that does not even give the Aboriginal people freehold title to their own land.
The word Justice, where the Aboriginal people are concerned is yet to be defined. The native Title Bill will destroy the Aboriginal people's chances of ever receiving justice in their own country.
W.G. Fox
Brisbane
[Edited for length.]
Wilderness and bushfires
Amongst the grief and fear of the past two weeks the ongoing need to protect NSW "Wilderness" areas has taken a battering. Poorly informed politicians have used the bushfire crisis to promote the notion that true "Wilderness" areas are a "threat to life and property", and "nature itself".
These claims are wrong. "Wilderness" is a large natural mainly intact area of 20,000 hectares or more. In the fires only 4 occurred in a wilderness; 87 or so in State Forests administered by the old Forestry Commission; 26 or so in non-Wilderness National Parks. So the vast majority of fires have nothing to do with Wilderness areas at all.
Anti-Wilderness groups have been misleading the public by claiming that a 1992 submission for "no trails in New England wet forests/rainforests reflects fire policies for dry Wilderness areas. It doesn't. The Bushfire Act allows for all necessary bushfire prevention measures to protect life and property. Similarly, The Wilderness Society (TWS) fire policy provides for (1) essential hazard reduction/firetrails in or around a Wilderness to protect adjacent life and property, and (2) "cool" fires that mimic the properly researched natural or Aboriginal fire regime (e.g. for hazard reduction).
TWS applauds the fire-fighters' efforts and success including the Wilderness supporters among them.
Tom McLoughlin
TWS NSW Campaign Officer
Sydney
Priorities
It's easy to see that the NSW Coalition Government have got their priorities wrong.
In Mr Fahey's electorate a staggering sum of $6.5 million has been allocated to a racetrack.
In Ms Machin's electorate of Port Macquarie, a paltry $400,000 was allocated as enhancement funding to alleviate the hospital crisis, in late September, 1993. The public hospital's waiting list for elective surgery, was at the time around 900.
One operating theatre is closed for four mornings a week, and one surgical ward is closed, all because of lack of funding. The hospital board prepared a submission, asking for a minimum of $2.3 million to open all beds and theatres and to allow the hospital to work efficiently, thus clearing the waiting lists.
The best Ms Machin could achieve was the ridiculous sum of $400,000. Now we find, in late January 1994 that even this sum was not released by the Health Department. Now our waiting list is at a catastrophic level with about 1 in every 600 residents in the electorate being on the waiting list.
The Port Macquarie Public Hospital has been a victim of long term underfunding. One could believe that this could be happening in order to make the new private "base" hospital look good by comparison, when it is up and operating in mid 1995. One could think that!
I say, Mr Fahey, that the buck stops with you. Half the money allocated for your precious racetrack would cover the amount required by the hospital just to bring it up to acceptable levels. You could give the hospital the other half, to keep it operating at this level and save anyone else any more, unnecessary and criminal suffering. If you wanted to that is, Mr Fahey.
Therese Mackay
Port Macquarie NSW
[Edited for length.]
Grameen Bank
Thanks for the article by Maree Nutt on the excellent work by the Grameen Bank (GL, January 19) and its efforts to export its successes in ending rural hunger and poverty through the Grameen Trust. Even the much-maligned World Bank has decided that the Trust is worth supporting, because in November 1993 the bank made a unique multimillion dollar donation to the Trust.
This will help expand the Trust into a prime area of need — Africa — where these sorts of small-scale loans can bring in desperately needed investment capital for buying cows or cloth, to start small businesses that successfully lift people out of their poverty.
Australia too should remember the poorest of the African poor and give to the Grameen Trust. It's the right kind of foreign aid dollars too: a hand-up, not a hand-out.
Peter Graves
Campbell ACT