Militarism
It would appear the bourgeois merchants of death are preparing an ideological onslaught on the minds of the Australian masses, in the run up to the 50th anniversary of the end of WW2.
Shopping last week at Garden City, a large complex in Brisbane, I was greeted by the charming vision of military hardware, tanks, planes, and — wait for it — a Tomahawk missile with "atomic" stencilled on the warhead. Military personnel in uniform were on hand to explain how these delightful implements of destruction operated.
People viewing this appeared to be largely oblivious of the nature of these weapons. Small children were scrambling over them, with Dad proudly showing them all the delights of an atomic war.
To add to the repulsive irony of the scene, everywhere shopkeepers were exhorting people to buy, buy, buy for Fathers' Day. Perhaps Dad could be given a bomb or automatic weapon or even a small missile. It could solve a few problems in one big bang.
I wrote in protest at this blatant warmongering to that impeccable paper, the Courier-Mail, and to Centre management. To date no publication or reply. I wonder why.
I suggest if similar displays occur elsewhere, protests or demos be quickly organised, preferably with the media in attendance, coupled with letters of protest to the press and centres that permit such vile displays of death.
Harry Lachter
Faringa Qld
Blame the victims
There is much fuss made about giving the Aboriginal people of Australia title to a tiny percentage of its surface. No fuss at all is made about taking far more of our land and handing it over to banks and multinationals; usually land occupied by individual farmers and their families, or belonging by right (as crown land) to the public.
Then we are told that Australia is coming out of the recession, when in fact much of the foreign capital attracted to this country causes the demise of local, labour-intensive industries, and their replacement by capital-intensive ones. We are told we are moving towards prosperity and an end to unemployment, but this is true only for the rich. One of the conditions of that prosperity is that the rest of us suffer even more unemployment.
Our elected governments, instead of addressing this problem (when they are not actually creating it), tell us that if things are going badly, then we ourselves are to blame. Are the roads unsafe? Wear a bicycle helmet! Is AIDS spreading, along with marriage breakups and domestic violence? Wear a condom! Are burglaries and muggings on the increase? Join a vigilante group! Is agri-business polluting our rivers and seas? Get rid of your septic tanks!
And we ourselves have been so trained to conformity that the government can sell our land, destroy our farms and businesses and plunge us into the sort of poverty that was the scandal of nineteenth century England, all without ever calling in the troops.
Perhaps we would do well not to look down quite so much at those third world countries where the state has to exert armed force against its citizens. At least they inspire fear in their masters, and not a sort of jovial pity.
(Dr) Peter Gilet
Hilton WA
[Edited for length.]
Talking clock
How great to hear Gareth Evans pontificate on how he'll save the world. "Changed his mind on the need for a permanent UN peace keeping force" and "welcomes the new situation on Bougainville". Oh yeah, this fair weather coward wants to become PM. The only way he'll get to PM is as a talking clock.
Robert Wood
Sydney
UN force
Senator Gareth Evans has now decided to support the building of a United Nations military force capable of a rapid response to situations such as the genocide in Rwanda.
Such a philosophy is doomed to failure even if there is any morality in militarily imposing Western views on culture and social relations on other societies.
It will fail because it does not address the underlying cause of most of the world's social disorder.
That cause is the pressure that increasing populations place on the available resources and the human tendency to find some scapegoat to blame for unsatisfied expectations.
After the failure of military intervention in Somalia and of imposed political order in Cambodia, Gareth Evans should realise that there are no quick-fix solutions to the increasing disintegration of established social order.
C.M. Friel
Alawa NT
The ALP and DSP
Max Lane (Write on, GLW #157) states that the record of the ALP in office should provoke angry polemics from socialists. Indeed it should. It should also provoke socialists to question sectarian shibboleths, and consider how to link up opposition to Government policies from outside and inside the ALP. The DSP avoids this issue by denying that the opposition from the ALP Left is in any way genuine. The article "Daring to Win" (GLW #154) attacked the entire ALP Left as fakers, and made the absurd claim that debates in the ALP are an elaborate pretence. This brings to mind the concern of St. Augustine that "a Christian ... should be heard by an unbeliever talking such nonsense that the unbeliever, perceiving him to be as wide from the mark as East from West, can hardly restrain himself from laughing." Socialists will be similarly concerned when members of the DSP make wild statements about the ALP.
Surely the immediate problem facing revolutionary socialists in Australia is not how to organise an insurrection, but how to win mass support for socialist ideas? "The emancipation of the working class is the task of the workers themselves" — therefore there is no road to socialism that runs over the top of the many working class supporters and members of the ALP. Yet the DSP demands (as a precondition to cooperation and serious dialogue) that left wingers "break with the ALP" — abusing those who remain in the ALP as a "left cover". This ultimatum places a barrier between the DSP and the very people they should be trying to convince. It also lumps place-seekers together with genuine leftists, who simply do not agree with the DSP's assessment that nothing can be done in the ALP.
The DSP has, to its credit, pioneered a very different approach towards environmentalists. Polemics (even angry polemics) are quite in order when environmentalists advocate immigration controls and other reactionary measures — but the DSP has addressed its polemics to the right quarter, attempted to make convincing arguments, and avoided sectarian abuse of the whole environmental movement. Why cannot the DSP apply similar constraints to its polemics against the ALP?
Roger Clarke
Brisbane
Lyotard
Phil Shannon (Write on, GLW #155) accuses the postmodern philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard of "philosophical entanglement with Nazi Revisionism". In particular, Shannon seems to attribute to Lyotard the view that "Holocaust denial doesn't need any relationship to reality to be a legitimate idea".
Shannon ought to say where Lyotard entangled himself in this way — simply saying, that he did so in 1988 is not enough. After all, one of Lyotard's most important works (The differend, published in 1983) offers a sustained critique of Holocaust denial (in particular the version of such denial propagated in France by Robert Faurisson). Moreover, Lyotard's work of the late 1980s (Heidegger and 'the jews') with which I am familiar seems utterly incompatible with Holocaust denial.
It surprises and disturbs me that Green Left should publish an allegation as serious yet as unsubstantiated as Shannon's. Surely you should have requested your correspondent to supply the information that would enable others to verify his claim. Your failure to do this suggests you do not grasp how serious the allegation is.
Alex Segal
Wagga Wagga NSW