Write On: Letters to the editor

October 25, 2009
Issue 

Balibo I

Clinton Fernandes describes himself as a "consulting historian" to the movie Balibo. He is a former military intelligence officer, who has his own reasons for promoting the official line on whether Australian intelligence was forewarned about the murders of the five newsmen in 1975.

His one source is a coronial enquiry. What he omits to say is that the coroner was working on the evidence made available to her.

Desmond Ball's work is renowned, and the evidence is documented in his book Death in Balibo, Lies in Canberra. His notes on the intercepts, which I have seen, indicate that the Defence Signals Directorate refused to release all the intercepts to the coronial enquiry for public consumption.

That's hardly surprising. However, Fernandes fails to mention this or that DSD gave its official testimony in closed session. This testimony was that General Murdani's reply to his subordinate in Balibo — who had asked what should be done about the journalists — was not translated and circulated until 3.28pm on October 15 — almost a day after the murders.

If Fernandes wishes to believe that it took 24 hours for that message to get from the receiving base at Shoal Bay to DSD headquarters, then he is indeed a devotee of Lewis Carroll, as he suggests.

John Pilger
By email

Balibo II

I think John Pilger is a bit too harsh in his criticism of the film Balibo (GLW #812).

He said: "The Australian government's complicity in the journalists' murder and, above all, in a bloodbath greater proportionally than that perpetrated by Pol Pot in Cambodia has been cut almost entirely from a major new film, Balibo."

In fact, there are several references to US and Australian collusion in the Indonesian invasion of East Timor. Most are very brief and could be missed by the average viewer.
But there is one scene that makes it explicit. In this scene, Australian journalist Roger East and Fretilin representative Jose Ramos Horta are fired on from Indonesian helicopters while walking through a forest towards the East Timorese town of Balibo.

After the attack, Horta tells East that the helicopters were supplied to Indonesia by the US, while intelligence about the presence of Australian journalists in East Timor was given to Indonesia by the Australian government.

Certainly there is much more that could have been included, but was omitted from the film. Pilger is right to draw attention to the omissions. Nevertheless, I still think that the film has some value in raising awareness of Australian collusion with the invasion.

Chris Slee
Melbourne, Vic

Tipping points

Simon Butler's column, "Is 350 the right carbon target?" (GLW #814) reminds me of a statement in Limits to Growth:

"Because of the delays in the system, if the global society waits until those constraints are unmistakably apparent, it will have waited too long."

The IPCC model seems to ignore other environmental pressures. It seems to ignore behavioural science, such as what 100 rats will do when living in a cage made for 10.

The panel's projections seem to ignore the reliable trend that every projection will include new, exponentially worse factors not realised before.

Surely the tipping point is not some future conjunction of facts in a narrow conception of environmental science, but rather a sociological milestone that we passed decades ago.

Chris Brown,
By email

Ethical elitism?

I think Ben Standing makes a mountain out of a molehill in his article, "Ethical elitism on climate change?" (GLW #814).

Perhaps stung by unfair accusations of hypocrisy for organising a climate action protest that included a car parade, his response — which implied his critics were worse than "conservative, neo-liberal ideologues" — is unhelpful.

Nor is it really accurate to say those who may have some illusions in ethical consumerism are elitists. Actually, the vast majority of people have ideas like this. Is the whole working class some kind of "ethical elite" now?

The radical left has a crucial role to play in the fight to halt climate change. It has a big responsibility to convince the majority to take on the systemic root cause of the problem — capitalism.

But because of this the left should be wary of writing off those who haven't yet draw this conclusion. Most people's ideas change and develop by actively trying to change the world themselves.

Creativity in looking for new ways to build movements and protest actions is needed, so I applaud the Critical Climate initiative. But our challenge is also to make it easy, not difficult, for people to join us in taking radical action.

Simon Butler
Glebe, NSW

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