NUS
I found the article "Time to Fight for Education For All" (GLW Feb 26) quite puzzling.
Jorge Jorquera writes that "the right wing of NUS" is suggesting the NUS "focus more narrowly on a campaign around AUSTUDY". Could he please tell us to whom he is referring, and where his information came from?
There is certainly a right wing in the National Union of Students — even the Liberals have delegates, since they have some support on campuses — but Jorge's assertion does not relate to the actual internal politics of NUS. Rhetoric addressing the question "If NUS is not to stand in the way", given the current role of NUS in helping to initiate an education campaign, verges on the surreal.
Further, in contradiction to his implication, the proposed loans scheme is not the only reason to run an AUSTUDY campaign. AUSTUDY must be expanded, since financially disadvantaged students in post-secondary education actually need an income if they are to continue to study. The campaign, which has begun this year, has always been linked by NUS to the other issues Jorge suggests — and in fact the slogans he gives are quotes from a resolution of the Victorian Cross Campus Education Network, most of the funding for which has been provided by NUS, including a poster with those very slogans.
Without wishing to indulge in sectarian squabbling, the article seems a close reflection of Resistance/DSP knowledge of the Union — which essentially stops at 1987.
In his history of the Union, Jorge neglects to inform readers of the Resistance role in starting the Union prior to their split from Left Alliance — an organisation which we would not know exists from Jorge's article.
Arnaud Gallois
Regional Organiser
Left Alliance, Victoria
Cuba solidarity
On behalf of the committee, I would like to express our most sincere thanks at your assistance in our campaign. The economic crisis facing Cuba at this point has serious implications not only for the self determination and survival of the Cuban people, but for peace and stability across the globe.
This is why so many people from around the world are organising to defend the interests of Cuba at this moment. Supply ships are being sent from Mexico, Chile, France, Venezuela, Ecuador and Brazil, as well as Australia. These campaigns are not just to overcome the food, equipment and petroleum shortages of the Cuban people. In sending a ship, we hope to send a message of solidarity to the Cuban people, and express our support — concretely, in what they have struggled so hard to achieve. At the same time, we hope to indicate to governments, such as ours, the US administration, and the United Nations, the cruel unnecessary and absurd injustice of the continuing international blockade of Cuba.
We hope to illustrate and increase the international mic blockade, and the United States base on Cuban soil. It is this support that Cuba needs now, to prevent any further aggression by the United States before it is too late. This is why we appreciate the assistance that you have given. We hope you can continue supporting the campaign in whatever form you are able and look forward to your future cooperation.
Margaret Mayhew
Cuban Solidarity Campaign
Sydney
Children
Why is it that the Right-to-Life movement have defended the Irish Government's decision to deny an abortion to a 14 year old rape victim, and yet say nothing about the UN trade embargo against Iraq, which, by cutting off the funds necessary to repair damage to power stations, water supplies and sewerage systems destroyed in the war, has caused the deaths of approximately 225,000 children? What about the 280,000 children who die from disease or malnutrition each week in the developing world, may of whose lives could be saved if our banks were not so greedy? Maybe the Right-to-Lifers find it easier to defend the lives of those who are not yet developed enough to ask such embarrassing questions.
David Munn
South Brighton SA
Macedonia
I am writing in response to the article that appeared in Green Left — Macedonia: focus for a new Balkan War — on February 5. I am sad to say that its author Mike Karadjis falls short of the truth of the matter in regards to the Macedonian problem.
I am appalled at the deliberate falsification of the facts.
Mike Karadjis states that, "the Macedonians are a Slavic people with a language distinct from both Bulgarian and Serbian".
This is not true.
The Oxford Classical Dictionary may be of some use to Mr. Karadjis in that it pin points the facts about Macedonians. The Oxford Classical Dictionary renown in English speaking countries states, that the "Macedones" who gave their name to the region of Nth. Greece were people who spoke the Greek language, followed Greek culture, tradition and religion. Thus indeed the Macedonians are nothing more than Greeks.
If Mr. Karadjis is not happy with the Oxford Classical Dictionary then he may endeavor to exercise his fingers and turn to The History of Greece by J.B. Bury and Russell Meiggs, professors of Cambridge and Oxford universities. It is a book taught in Victorian High Schools that states, "The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their traditions and language combine to testify".
The Greekness of Macedonians has not been an issue for almost three thousand years, so why has it become one in the last forty-five years? In order to assist Mr. Karadjis and others who may find this question interesting I will turn to A.J.P. Taylor's book The Struggle for Mastery in Europe. Both author and book are considered expert in the field of European history.
After Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria attacked the Ottoman Empire in 1912, the region of Macedonia became a contentious issue as iece of it.
A.J.P. Taylor states, "The Bulgarians had regarded all Macedonia as theirs — a view with which most ethnologists agreed. The Serbs could not claim the inhabitants of Macedonia as Serb except in the extreme north; but they invented the theory that most Macedonia was inhabited by neither Bulgarians or Serbs but by Macedo-Slavs; and this invention of a nationality ultimately carried the day."
The invention was reinforced in 1945 when Yugoslavia established its part of Macedonia as a republic.
Do we accept the invention or the fact?!
An invention aimed at creating a unified Yugoslavia. Or a fact of 3000 years that Macedonians are indeed Greeks.
I put it to Mr. Karadjis that the oppressed people are indeed the true Macedonians who have had their title and history manipulated and usurped by the Slavic people. Are we going to accept the invention of a nationality that usurps the title and history of another people and denies through its propagandist channels the truth to the outside world?
I put it to Mr. Karadjis that his knowledge of the Macedonian issue is a tepid one and an endeavor to educate himself will take him a long way. Macedonians are Greeks not because the E.C. may say so. Not even if the great historians say so but because it is a simple truth.
Greg Andreas
Socialists and elections
James Basle asked why the International Socialist Organisation called for a vote for the Labor Party over the DSP candidate in the recent ACT elections (Write on, February 19).
Whether we like it or not, it is the Labor Party and not the DSP or ISO that has its base in the working class. If we are to build a party of and for the working class in Australia then we have to relate to the political situation as its exists not as we would like it to be. In the real world, despite Labor's procapitalist policies, the vast majority of workers who are militants or socialists support the ALP.
So we call for a vote for the ALP without illusions. We have no illusions in parliament or the ALP as a means of social change. In crisis situations the police, the army and the state bureaucracy lie outside democratic control. The idea of people controlling society through Parliament is a sham.
The task facing the left today is to rebuild socialist politics and organisation by relating to struggles against bosses and the state. This is our central argument when we talk about elections.
We do not oppose supporting candidates to the left of the Labor Party when they represent real social forces: large numbers of workers and people engaged in struggle. This is not the case with the DSP. Further, in the case of the DSP campaign in the ACT elections, there was no mention of any sort of struggle nor of the limits of eady have a party that fosters reformist illusions in parliament — the ALP — why does the DSP wish to be another?
Anthony Hayes
for the ISO Canberra
O'Connor ACT
Stand up, real Australia
So the gutter press in the UK takes offense at Mr. Keating's quite restrained comments on Australia's sphere of interest. Who cares? These tabloids, most of which are owned by Rupert Murdoch, dish up an Alf Garnett form of the same reactionary effluvia (or should I say effluent?) that he serves up here.
Some of us would be even more honest than Mr. Keating about Britain, its monarchy, House of Lords and their treatment of Australia. The British public has tacitly consented to pay a certain family billions of dollars in perpetuity to do absolutely nothing of significance, except breed, play polo and make the odd platitudinous comment. The same public has also agreed to provide a substantial sinecure, together with sundry mansions and estates, to another group of families and has furthermore given them the power to veto any worthwhile legislation their elected representatives come up with.
You may ask: what has this to do with Australia? Well, until we cut the umbilical cord with the hag of Europe, everything. We should not forget that the same country which institutionalised privilege convicted our ancestors for trying to eat, banished them to Terra Nullius and used them as white slaves for eighty years. Soon after the Americans woke up to the British, and Tom Paine called the monarchy "the master-fraud", the British decided to establish the world's first gulag.
Australia repaid Britain's benevolence by taking her side in almost every war she found herself in, and when Australia's very existence was threatened in World War Two, Churchill wouldn't let us have our own troops back! Since then, we have allowed the Queen's representative to dismiss one of our elected Prime Ministers, and in a time of deep recession, fork out $1.6 million for the stimulation of the Queen's company.
It is time the real Australia stood up. That is the Australia of Eureka — the Southern Cross minus the Union Jack. Privilege may be hereditary over there, but over here we have the opportunity to proclaim: "Your convicts are free!"
Graeme Merry
Doveton Vic