Arief Budiman and the IMF
On March 28, Arief Budiman, an Indonesian activist and currently a professor at Melbourne Uni, was interviewed on SBS's Dateline program. Before the economic crisis in Indonesia, Arief Budiman said he was against the IMF and capitalism. But today, as Indonesian people are starving and suffering, he says we have no choice and must seek IMF assistance.
Meanwhile, I noticed the group, Friends of the Nation and People of Indonesia, initiated by Arief Budiman and his friends, is appealing to governments and international financial institutions to demand political change in Indonesia as a condition of the aid.
As the first generation to introduce Marxist ideas into Indonesia under the New Order government, Arief Budiman knows that the IMF represents the interests of international capital: the US, Japan and the European Union.
Their real interests are in maintaining the flow of profits to companies like Freeport, General Electric, British Aerospace and Honda, and not democracy. Continued exploitation of Indonesia's natural resources and cheap labour does not go hand-in-hand with democracy.
As an academic, Arief Budiman knows the record of IMF. In the last 30 years, around 90 developing countries have received loans from the IMF: 48 are no better off, and 32 are poorer. IMF reforms always hit the poor, who face massive job losses and cuts to education, public health and social security. The IMF's packages won't solve the starvation and suffering of Indonesian people; it will be a disaster.
The People's Democratic Party (PRD) says the IMF should not intervene in the Indonesian economy. What we really need to do is to strengthen the growing mass movement, which can bring down the dictatorship. After that, we should nationalise all the assets of Suharto's family and his cronies to solve the economic crisis.
PRD Asia Pacific representative
Sydney
Gay venues open to women
I don't support the decision to legally exclude women from Club 80 or The Laird because the justification is flawed. We have been asked to believe that gay men are shrinking violets who are intimidated from expressing their sexuality in the presence of women. This is in spite of the popularity of mixed venues within the scene.
Rosanne Bersten (GLW #311) introduces another myth — the sexually aggressive straight woman who taunts queer men. None of these mythical women have made it into Club 80 and few if any have ever "scored" at The Laird.
There is no "balanced" gender allocation of resources within the queer community. In Melbourne, there are 6 male saunas; 2 cruise clubs and 1 male only hotel. Lesbians and Bi women have none of these facilities, at best they get "nights" at straight or gay establishments. These "nights" are always under threat of closure or being moved to a different venue.
Notwithstanding any of the political justifications that the owners of Club 80 and The Laird make, the decision to exclude women has to be seen within the context of capitalist competition. There are too many male-only venues and the market can't sustain them all. One response is to open your venue to women. The other approach is to thump your chest about being male-only and thereby position yourself as the best venue in a niche market.
Logically women should be given control of some male-only sex venues. To suit everyone's tastes, there should be women only, male only and mixed sex venues.
Pleasure for everyone not just the rich!
Thornbury Vic
Clinton cover up
I agree with the theoretical postulates contained in Lisa Macdonald's article in the GLW #311 under the heading "Cover Up". At the same time, I am of the opinion that the main motive of the media and the right-wing Republicans in the USA is to prevent President Clinton from introducing a few reforms to improve social welfare.
There is also considerable merit in the argument that President Clinton has upset the multi-millionaires who control the tobacco industry.
I find it hard to believe that the conservative owners of the media are so righteous and virtuous that they are unduly concerned with the private life of President Clinton and the publicity seeking women whom the ruling class are using for their own reactionary purposes.
Strathfield NSW
Port Adelaide CES
At the CES Port Adelaide you use the touch-screen computers: touching "Surrounding Areas", then "Farming" for the picking jobs this time of year, then "labourers", then "Print". It churns out: "Job Number 001-170-1058; Mount Compass SA; Labourer/farm-hands required for heavy work moving water pipes from various crops and for picking; must have own transport, protective clothing, gumboots etc; age open; start asap; full time; pay $7 per hour (that's right $7).
You take this ticket to the young man (this time) behind the deserted counter in the already slashed-in-half office space of the CES and say that you object in the strongest possible terms to the insulting language of this prospective employer, to the arrogance of capitalist power which assumes to abuse job seekers and to trumpet the restitution of peonage for Australian capitalist agribusiness through this public agency.
Newspapers would refuse such a defamatory advertisement and yet the CES has become an instrument of worker oppression and alienation through the publication of such a text.
The young clerk won't give you the farmer's number if you are going to phone him to give a mouthful. The farmer is a client. You insist that you are also a client. The young clerk says that if you phoned the farmer and didn't take the job you would be cut off the dole. You say that the rates are illegal; he says the rates must be legal because the machine has printed them; you say you need the farmer's name to take this matter to the relevant union. He says that if you asked him the whole trouble was the unions. You say that without the unions he would be working for $7 an hour himself, "That's right $7.". He has never belonged to a union in his whole lifetime which has been as short as it has been purposeless.
Port people at the other touch-screens are beginning to take an interest. You can't lose your cool or you will be doing a starve. But you are arguing for yourself and the others. And you know that in the fullness of time this young man will also get his as the axes descend upon the CES and the instrument of oppression it has become.
The nightmare of Webb Dock is everywhere, comrades, ensnaring us no matter into whichever antechamber of decadent capitalism we might happen to stumble when seeking refuge or asylum however necessary or temporary that may be.
Semaphore SA
ANTaR and free speech
At Australians for Native Title and Reconciliation's (ANTaR) Sydney Sea of Hands (March 20-21) event organisers stopped the distribution of leaflets for the April 5 rally opposing the Jabiluka uranium mine and of Green Left Weekly.
They used security guards, and a council ranger, to aid them. We have also heard that an International Socialist Organisation member at their stall was threatened with legal action after being photographed.
We think such restriction of free speech by a social movement organisation is a mistake that holds back the movement's development.
They used laws stopping the use of public space for free speech to enforce the ban, rather than standing in solidarity against those laws — a move that could backfire any time a native title activist tries to sell a badge from a street stall, or distribute a leaflet in a park during a demonstration (these are examples where fines have been imposed or threatened).
Organisers claimed the leaflet and GLW distribution detracted from the purpose of the Sea of Hands. Yet the support GLW has given to the fight for native title, and ANTAR specifically, has been rock solid, the issue on sale included.
The anti-Jabiluka rally calls for Aboriginal rights, not uranium. This material offered people attending the Sea of Hands additional information and opportunities for action around the issues of native title and reconciliation.
The organisers' stance is censorship — denying access to any point of view other than the "official" one. Those involved in the movement need access to all views in the movement so that they can decide for themselves the course the movement takes. Every event we organise should become a festival of ideas and discussion.
Jonathan Strauss, Democratic Socialist Party member
Sydney