Freedom of information and privacy
I write regarding a recent editorial in GLW (#317) titled "Big brother is watching" in which you touched on several developments of interest to civil libertarians.
Work has been proceeding in all States and Territories and at the Federal level, to enable easier transfer of data between government authorities, especially those who maintain or have input to financial and personal data on individuals and companies. For about the last 12 months many of the major government databases have been upgraded or modified to common protocols which enable easier data-transfers.
What I find interesting is:
1. The organisations involved are often precluded by law from releasing information about their clients, so what logical reason can there be for them to take part in such an exercise, other than that they intend to illegally swap information with other organisations?
2. Some of the Victorian authorities involved have outsourced their IT functions, yet the new private operators of these databases are continuing the exercise, which suggests that they see some commercial advantage in doing so.
3. As a former Freedom of Information officer with the Victorian Treasury, I can see important implications in all of this for future access to government records. As data transfer between large corporations and government bodies is being made easier by making their software and other data protocols compatible, individuals may paradoxically find it more difficult to access their records, as the privatised databases are outside the scope of FOI laws.
Carlton Vic
[Abridged.]
Recycled Paper
Since the beginning of the year, a trial of recycled copier paper has been running at a number of Australia Post outlets in NSW and Melbourne. Unlike all other recycled copier papers on sale in Australia, Canon 100 is made from 100% post-consumer waste. It is laser-guaranteed and retails for $8.70.
Two added reasons for buying Canon are the use of old-growth pulp in all Australian-made virgin copier paper, and Indonesian-made paper, described by the Boycott Woodchipping Campaign as "an environmental nightmare".
It is vital to make this trial a success, so that it can be extended to Australia Post shops over a wider area.
A number of community and environment-oriented organisations in Lismore are now buying Canon 100 regularly, which has resulted in dozens of reams being sold here. Please ask your local community centre and environment centre to use this product to make the trial a success everywhere.
Lismore NSW
[Abridged.]
Paul Robeson
George Petersen is quite correct in saying (Write on, GLW #319) that my piece on Paul Robeson did not take up his attitudes towards the crimes of Stalinism. The reason is the same as why Petersen uses the formulation "It is beyond belief that Robeson could not have been aware of the millions of Russians murdered by Stalin" (emphasis added).
Like Petersen, I found nothing on record about Robeson's understanding of, knowledge of or attitudes towards Stalinism. He was always an uncritical supporter of the deformed and degenerated workers states but beyond that, in the time I had, I could find nothing on what he believed or knew and I chose not to speculate.
I couldn't even get certainty on whether he was a member of the Communist Party. He always slid around the issue, as loyal CPUSA members were under discipline to do.
Given the mysteries, I felt it best to concentrate on his life as an anti-capitalist fighter. If others have more information, I think it could be interesting to discuss it in the letters page. Robeson, above all else, was a big man; certainly big enough to have his politics fully assessed.
Sydney
Hugging Habibie
GLW's usually valuable Indonesia coverage, hit a new high with #320. Among many fine articles, Allan Nairn's on CIA ties to activist disappearances, particularly notable. There needs to be one clarification, however.
Nairn's article originally appeared in America's excellent alternative newspaper, The Nation. Nairn's original article cited General Wiranto as saying he did not care if troops carried out a Tienanmen-style slaughter of democracy activists.
Actually only Amien Rais, elite Muslim democracy leader, knows which general said this. It was said in private to Rais, though he reported the conversation publicly. It's more likely to have been Suharto's son-in-law, General Prabowo — for several reasons.
First: Wiranto's own daughter was among the university students demonstrating. Prabowo has no teenage or adult offspring. Second: Wiranto and Prabowo were widely reported as locked in a power struggle, days, if not weeks, before. Third: Rais is known to have good relations with Wiranto, but at odds with Prabowo, and the rest of Suharto's family. Fourth: Prabowo nearly staged a coup, according to this week's Far Eastern Economic Review, when Wiranto demoted him.
Highly reputable sources — e.g. Businessweek's current issue — and a mountain of other reports and rumours suggest Prabowo links to agent provocateurs inflaming anti-Chinese riots as prelude to a law-and-order coup. Ditto Trisakti student shootings.
There's more. But suffice to ask: aren't Keating and Co. now incredibly quiet? Why aren't they hugging Habibie, Suharto's protege, the way they did the puppet master? Could it be they've woken up to deepening divisions within Indonesia's military? Maybe even guessed Habibie's a Kerensky?
Important now for Indonesia's democracy movement to work out which soldiers are on their side, which neutral, and which against.
Darlinghurst NSW
Hemp
Your readers may not know that allegations have been made, that the number one fibre crop for centuries was made illegal in most of the world, because its alter ego marijuana was classified a deadly drug. After the lifting of prohibition on alcohol, the USA federal police needed to continue their quest to control society's evils.
Hemp can be used to make natural alternatives to a lot of products currently being made with chemicals, which are destroying the environment. Why is it that most countries still bow to the US pressure to keep this plant illegal?
Hemp can be used to make natural versions of the following: paper, cloth, plastics, ethanol for fuel and many more. Paper from trees, which take years to grow, also uses heaps of chemicals in the process. Hemp needs none.
Similarly, cotton uses chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Plastics are made from oil. Hemp can be grown chemical free. Petrol from oil is extremely polluting, ethanol is almost clean burning.
Hemp takes a few months to grow. We don't need to keep cutting down our precious forests to support the financial security and job security of the chemical companies and police departments, which pour millions of dollars into keeping this plant illegal.
Sydney
[Abridged.]
Heritage Protection Bill
I share Jennifer Thompson's concerns in "Bill threatens 1967 referendum win" (GLW, May 17) that the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Heritage Protection Bill 1998 will further reduce indigenous people's rights to negotiate by transferring responsibility for Aboriginal heritage protection back to state governments. This is in addition to the Native Title Amendment Bill which encompasses the major outstanding issues on Aboriginal and TSI land rights between Indigenous and other Australians.
I am concerned about the prospects of a double dissolution Federal election held partly on the Native Title Bill, which would have an uncertain result and would be likely to increase tension between Indigenous and other Australians and would also be likely to result in one or more One Nation Party senators.
I believe the Government should consider putting the three propositions in its 10 point plan amended/rejected by the Senate to the people by referendum at the next election.
The decision to make these laws would have remained with the people and would not have been made by senators and members of Parliament, some of whom are shareholders in pastoral leases and mining companies.
Farrer ACT
[Abridged.]
Permanent revolution
I don't know what the ISO's Giles Ungpakorn said in his meetings on Indonesia; the ISO bans me from their public meetings because I disagreed with them on "no free speech for Pauline Hanson". Still, Graham Matthews' polemic against Ungpakorn (GLW #319) does not convince me.
Permanent revolution means, not ignoring democratic or agrarian questions, but aiming for a workers' and peasants' government, led by a workers' party ready to break through capitalist limits, to deal with those questions. Leave it to bourgeois politicians, and they will do it in a botched, bureaucratic, anti-worker way.
The facts of Indonesia — where the growing industrial working class is the most potent force for change, and where the capitalists, not any feudalistic class, already rule — reinforce this perspective. Independent workers' politics, or a "transitional government" with the anti-Suharto bourgeois? Call for a Constituent Assembly, or for the recall of Suharto's stooge assembly?
It is a poor sort of respect for the PRD's heroism not to debate these issues openly where we can. And army terror in Indonesia is no reason for not spelling out a full criticism of the pre-1965 CP policy of support for the "Nationalist-Islamic-Communist" alliance.
Brisbane
Movement building?
I was somewhat mystified by the interview with Graham Matthews in your June 3 issue.
Graham stresses the importance of movement building. I'm sure he believes what he is saying, yet, with one or two exceptions, we just don't see the DSP building "ongoing campaigns".
Adelaide
East Timor
We take this opportunity, our 1998 AGM, to congratulate those in ASIET and Resistance for their unstinting activism on the East Timor issue.
For years, activists of all persuasions around this country have not been persuaded that East Timor was, to quote Gareth Evans, "a lost cause", and the Timorese themselves have been the constant inspiration of the solidarity movement.
We have no doubt that independence will be won by the East Timorese. When it happens, and no thanks will be due to the Australian government when it does, we believe that support groups should be there to give any help needed to rehabilitate East Timor after the ruinous occupation.
We congratulate the East Timorese who have fought so hard and so intelligently on so many fronts against such overwhelming odds. And we should congratulate ourselves too for the small amount of good we have done, and recommit ourselves to the remaining struggle, and the rebuilding of East Timor.
Free East Timor.
Secretary, Australia East Timor Association, NSW
Suharto
In an interesting article in the Sun Herald (25/4) Brian Toohey makes an important point that leading members of the Australian government, both Labor and Liberal "long after the evidence has become plain for all to see ... seem to have enormous trouble confronting the reality that Soeharto was a brutal and corrupt dictator".
He tells us that Prime Minister Howard heaped praise on Suharto. Alexander Downer refused to support calls within Indonesia for reform. Kim Beazley, Labor leader, says nothing about Indonesia withdrawing from East Timor. Paul Keating defied parody by describing Suharto as a great constitutionalist.
Indonesia is a potentially rich country brought to economic ruin by a corrupt dictatorship that tortured and murdered any who might resist.
With Australian politicians like this, I fear for what they could go along with in Australia.
Balmain NSW