Newstart
When I first heard of Newstart, I assumed that it was yet another tiresome manoeuvre on the part of bureaucrats to allow them even more avenues of harassment: by making us dress up in funny clothes and travel around all day long on public transport in search of non-existent jobs.
Now, however, the scales have fallen from my eyes and I see the scheme in all its awesome and imaginative scope. Newstart is no more nor less than an attempt to put all the unemployed back in high schools (called, of course, by other names)! That is to reduce us to a state of minority (depriving us of our adult personas), to instil in us a feeling of ignorance and incompetence, to keep us off the streets, to give us a spurious sense of progressing towards the goal of adult employment yet to finally justify the exclusion of large numbers of us from such employment on the grounds of our manifest incompetence, to foster a competitive ethos among the unemployed (thus preventing the development of any inconvenient solidarity), and to ensure that the most energetic and mentally agile are spirited away, by this process of artificial Darwinian selection, into minor positions within the ruling elite.
The mind boggles. Yet such a tactic has worked for years to keep perfectly capable and mature teenagers chained to classroom desks and out of their elders' places of employment.
One final touch is the little note at the end of the June 28th advertisement put into all our papers (at what cost?) by the Newstart people. If there is no training facility near you, you will be sent to live in a place where such employment training exists. Rural Australia, in other words, will be out of bounds to the unemployed, and the people who live there will be able to enjoy their relative prosperity without the embarrassing presence of the poor, who will now be safely confined in huge urban ghettoes.
Peter Gilet
Nedlands WA
[Edited for length.]
Green party
Ian Murell's letter (GL June 26th) raised at least two points which go to the heart of the debate about whether a broadly-based green party is possible at this time in Australia — or whether we will continue to cede electoral dominance to the Labor and Liberal parties.
In my opinion, the time is ripe. In that sense, I agree with Bob Brown and the other initiators of the national Green Party initiative. However, I believe the new party should not proscribe members of other parties — be they members of the Australian Democrats, Democratic Socialist Party, New Left Party, Rainbow Alliance, or any other organization. The reason is simple — no one of these groupings has gained sufficiently widespread support to serve as the basis for a new broad-based political force. However, if a substantial proportion of the membership of all of them combined with some of the greens and progressives who
currently work within the ALP — and also attract members who at present eschew any existing party — together we would constitute an effective third force.
-1>I do have a preference for a party as opposed to a loose alliance. It would be very difficult to achieve the necessary level of cohesion, and effective sharing of practical and intellectual resources, without a party structure. However, I feel that Ian's support for "a proscription clause in the constitution of a national green party" is misguided — as long as party affiliation is not concealed, and Green Party members agree not to support other candidates in elections where it stands.0>
Ian appears concerned that the DSP will act as a bloc vote. My view is different. I think that members of any existing party would grow in loyalty to the new party — but that loyalty must be earned through our collective efforts. Forming any large political coalition requires compromise and goodwill. It is unfair to ask existing parties to disband as a prerequisite for unity. The real prerequisite is suspension of old animosities and a desire to co-operate.
There is an irony about Ian's letter which he does not recognise. His ability to make his point in a weekly national newspaper is a result of the organizational skills of the DSP, which chose to relinquish its own party newspaper and pool that resource with others on the green and left side of politics — a generous initiative which deserves thanks and appreciation. Ian's other major point about consensus decision-making needs more discussion. I doubt that it is realistic to operate entirely by consensus in a political party. But clearly, the structure and process of the new party should be carefully considered. At this stage, there is no need to foreclose any innovative options.
It's time we jettisoned the divisive attitudes which have been responsible for the green movement's unsatisfactory record of electoral achievement in recent years, and took determined steps to empower a growing and effectively disenfranchised sector of the community.
Sid Walker
Canberra
[Edited for length.]
Population
-2>When I bought your issue on population (#14), I did so with much hesitation. Was it going to be more of the usual about curbing population growth in the South? Or was it going to be an alternative view?0>
I had hoped for the latter but I was disappointed; it was more of the usual. So much space was given over to right wing drivel about the urgent need for family planning programmes so that the third world's population doesn't "get out of hand" and "we" (the third world) don't place too much pressure on the world's few and finite resources.
These are distorted and offensive arguments. They have reinforced western arrogance, power and racism and it is outrageous that sections of the left subscribe to them.
What I'd like to ask is why we talk about the "population problem" in the South? Is it because the world
is not filling up with white babies? And why do we perpetuate this myth of population when the UNFPA's own figures tell us that population growth rates are slowing down on a world scale by 5% and in South nations by 1 to 7%. So what's the problem?
The problem is the west — the 25% or so who are not willing to give up their consumerist, wealthy and powerful societies. The figures are well known: the 25% consume
.5J243>2
55J0>/
.5>3
55> of the world's production, including its food production. The west's animals eat nearly
.5J243>1
55J0>/
.5>3
55> of all cereal grains harvested — much of it grown on the best land in the third world.
-1>We're talking about power; not the availability of resources. The world can feed itself many times over (without harming the environment), but its food and wealth are controlled by a privileged few.0>
Any superficial analysis would conclude that colonialism, war and international capital (perpetuated by the west) are the reasons for hunger and poverty. But still we simplistically blame the victims and absolve ourselves from the terror we have unleashed on
.5J243>3
55J0>/
.5>4
55> of the world's people.
What has been so offensive about your population issue is the sheer arrogance and poverty of knowledge. I expected a more intelligent analysis.
Nadya Stani
Dulwich Hill NSW
Medicine and vivisection
Vivisection is the research method favoured by the chemical/pharmaceutical industries because it enables them to market their products under a variety of contradictory labels.
Doctors and scientists have always been and still are (International League of Doctors for Abolition of Vivisection and Doctors in Britain Against Animal Experiments) leading the cause for the total abolition of vivisection for the simple reason that they well know it is scientifically invalid, and not just morally bankrupt. Claims of success through vivisection always turn out, upon examination, to be a fraud.
-1>Insulin, mentioned by Steven Rose (GL #18), is a typical hoax and can only be considered useful if diabetes is incurable — but homeopathic drugs were able to cure it long before the advent of insulin. With insulin one is never cured, but instead you become a consumer for life. Thus it is not difficult to see why the multi-squillion dollar drug industry sees economic ruin in curative therapy.0>
The chemical industry is finding it increasingly important to convince the ever gullible public that traditional acupuncture and classical homeopathy (discovered, researched, developed and practised by medical doctors) are merely New Age Trendy placebos and not real medicine.
While vivisectors grope about in the guts and brains of poor tortured creatures, the medical sciences based on human energy fields are ignored. The Campaign for the Use of Rational Research and Ethical Drugs (C.U.R.E.D.) has been begun with three aims: To eradicate vivisection; to expose the danger of modern medicine; to bring the real therapeutic sciences into the light of day so we can
use them.
Vivisection has only one use — to provide alibis for companies who wish to sell deadly junk for money.
Rob McKinnon-Lower
Denmark WA
[Edited for length.]