Unity
All the socialist parties believe in the unity of the working class, but it is essential for this concept to be realised.
The ruling class and their well-paid servile ideological defenders will be laughing all the way to the bank if we cannot secure unity among ourselves.
The establishment of a united democratic socialist party is an essential condition in order to win the support of the working class and all disadvantaged sections of the nation.
United we stand, but divided we fall.
Bernie Rosen
Strathfield NSW
Holy Grail
America's permanent chasing around for the elusive weapons of mass destruction (Iraq, Syria, Iran — where next? Iceland?) reminds one of the medieval Crusaders and King Arthur's Round Table knights, combing Europe for the Holy Grail (the cup that Christ allegedly drank from at the Last Supper) — they chased it in Jerusalem, Germany, Spain (Monsalvat) and England (Glastonbury). Of course, they found nothing: it was a legend. However, it provided the libretto for Wagner's magnificent opera Parsifal. Can Bush, Powell and Co. give up hunting for WMDs, and just produce a splendid opera instead?
Rosemary Evans
St Kilda Vic
Iraq's elusive weapons
Bush, Blair and Howard "justified" their illegal war on Iraq by saying that its weapons of mass destruction were a threat to global peace and security and to Australia. Not only did UN weapons inspectors find nothing but Saddam did not use them when Coalition forces crossed the "red line" around Baghdad. If Saddam had WMD one wonders when he would have used them if not in defence of Baghdad and his home city, Tikrit.
Now, when Coalition forces have the run of Iraq and Iraqis are no longer terrified of divulging information, we have former UN weapons inspector Ray Zilinskas telling Rafael Epstein that: "We're talking about a potential (sic), not actual weapons" (ABC Radio National's AM, April 23). What a tragedy and a crime that the collateral damage and the vast areas of depleted uranium contamination were not also "potential".
Gareth Smith
Byron Bay NSW
Boycott ExxonMobil
Many people are feeling disempowered after being part of the largest peace movement ever. What can we do now?
Iraq's oil was one of the main reasons for this war (see Greenpeace's briefing "The Tiger in the Tanks" on ExxonMobil, the largest oil corporation at <http://www.greenpeace.org>).
ExxonMobil has lobbied fiercely against US attempts to decrease oil dependency. By doing this, it is fuelling not only global warming but also wars to secure future oil supplies. The US consumes more than 25% of the oil produced world-wide and imports slightly more than half of this. Iraq has about 10% of the world's oil reserves — 11.2 billion barrels. That's 16 years' of US oil consumption.
So join Greenpeace's campaign and boycott ExxonMobil (also known as Mobil and Esso). Let ExxonMobil know what you are doing. And let's reduce oil use by driving less, car-pooling, cycling or walking. Iraqi oil must be used to rebuild Iraq not to make a small number of wealthy people even richer.
Sarah Isaacs
Kuranda Qld
US bully
The Washington vision of its own special kind of democracy in the Middle East has begun to come to light. Their first cruel blow at a small, patently defenceless nation reminds me of the technique of an infamous Chief School Inspector, back in the days of caning, who specialised in reforming the most unruly classes in the toughest schools.
He would sit at the back and watch all the boys until he identified the weakest, most picked-on child. Then he would haul him out in front of the class on some slender pretext and humiliate and beat him until he broke down. Afterwards, he would sit back and watch a traumatised but suddenly obedient class get on with its work.
Are we going to sit nice and quietly for the Chief Inspector?
Ben Hingley
Annandale NSW
Tale of two media
During the US-led invasion of Iraq, US broadcasting service CNN used computer generated images, special night-vision shots and Hollywood-style special effects to sanitise and camouflage this brutal war.
Images like an American soldier offering water to a "surrendering" Iraqi soldier portrayed the US invasion as "rescuing" the Iraqi conscripts from Saddam Hussein's regime. It gave the viewer the feeling that they were in some kind of movie. Other images, such as wide-angle shots with explosions and plumes of smoke in the distance, always with the commentary "laser-guided precision" were broadcasted to placate the viewer into believing that this is a "clean" war.
Like in the last Gulf War in 1991, the US media fully supported this war. Invading forces were described as "liberators", "patriots", "freedom fighters" and "our sons and daughters". When referring to the world-wide protest movement, terms such as "angry mob", "violent protesters", "Saddam sympathisers" and even "terrorists" were used to manipulate, brainwash and subdue the population into supporting "our troops" (meaning the war) and not to get involved in the massive peace movement.
On the other hand, we have al Jazeera, which relied on Arab journalists throughout Iraq. Their TV footage was real, confrontational and brutal. It showed the horrors of war like burnt bodies of children, women in Basra hospital who had their legs blown off, and hundreds of dead men lying in lakes of blood.
Other images included Iraqi soldiers who had "downed" a US helicopter, several US and British soldiers taken as prisoners of war. They also informed people about the huge peace movement all over the world.
Katya Goodall
Melbourne
[Abridged.]
ANZAC Day
John "Winston" Howard — the Swine of Remembrance. Let's stop politicising Anzac Day with sleazy grandstanders, irrelevant anthems and ugly, alien Union Jacks.
As for calling our illegal invasion of Iraq "ANZAC", what an insult to the men and women who fought in just wars against Nazism or imperialist aggression. And how do our Kiwi brothers and sisters feel about being dragged into Baghdad by a jingo drongo like Howard? They own the letters "NZ", not the vile Liberal Party, and they stayed out of the Bush clique's Iraq adventure.
If there were any Australian servicemen associated with the English units who carried out political killings in Northern Ireland for the Thatcher regime, would we call those assassinations "ANZAC" too? I suspect our grubby weakling "Winston" probably would.
Peter Woodforde
Melba ACT
Zionism
In GLW #535, Paul Benedek counters Dawn Cohen by stating that, "No, Zionism means belief in an exclusively Jewish state". He has clearly failed to consider that during the first Zionist conference held in Basel, Switzerland, in August 1897, the aims of Zionism were not this at all. The Zionist Congress' aims were clearly stated when it declared, "The aim of Zionism is to create for the Jewish people a home in Eretz-Israel (Land of Israel) secured under public law." Exactly as Dawn Cohen has pointed out. Nowhere does this proclaim, nor has it since been proclaimed, that an exclusively Jewish state must be enforced.
It is interesting to note that the greatest activist against racism, US civil rights leader Martin Luther King, stated in August 1967 that: "You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely 'anti-Zionist'. And I say, let the truth ring forth... When people criticise Zionism, they mean Jews — this is God's own truth. Anti-Semitism, the hatred of the Jewish people, has been and remains a blot on the soul of mankind. In this we are in full agreement. So know also this: anti-Zionism is inherently anti-Semitic, and ever will be so."
(The text of Martin Luther King's 1967 speech is at < http://www.internationalwallofprayer.org/A-022-Martin-Luther-King-A HREF="mailto:Zionism.html"><Zionism.html>.)
King, in his fight against racism, was making a clear point. It's OK to criticise Israeli government policy. It's not OK to criticise Zionism, which advocates Israel's right to exist. What this means is that opposing Israel's brutal presence in the Occupied Territories is fine, but claiming that the very existence of Israel is occupation, and that it must be removed, is racism.
Furthermore, Benedek would do well to avail himself to exactly who "is in the firing line at the moment" in Australia today during Bush's war. Violent anti-Semitic attacks against Jewish individuals, and Nazi swastika daubings on Jewish buildings, are at their highest number since recording of these incidents began. Blaming Israel for Bush's war smacks of the racist Dreyfus Affair all over again.
Craig Milner
Eltham Vic
It takes all types
After reading Melanie Sjoberg's letter (GLW #535) I feel compelled to enter the Buffy debate.
I have watched Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and I strongly disagreed with the sentiments in the review printed in GLW (#531).
This does not equate with condemning anyone who watches Buffy for being "less than sincere about activist politics". It is simply engaging in the debate.
At the end of the day, it takes all types to make a revolution. Some of us will watch Buffy and think it's crap. Some of us will watch it and wax lyrical about how progressive it is. And some of us will choose to "blow up our TVs", which — despite Sjoberg's protestations — would not for most of us influence greatly our ability "to relate to and engage with the people we come into contact with in our daily lives".
Kathy Newnam
Newcastle NSW
Error in Cuba article
Your correspondent (GLW #535) made a serious error in his article about the money the US taxpayers are turning over — like it or not — to the cause of subverting the Cuban Revolution. This is most certainly being done, but the organisations he listed as Cuban organisations receiving those funds are actually organisations in the US working towards that end.
They, in turn, channel money and goods to the cause of undoing Cuba's socialist revolution, but it is unfortunate that he had the information backwards. The fact that the US Congress gives such funds to these US-based organisations is reprehensible, but is not in and of itself proof of the guilt of those accused at the trials, rather, it is their receiving funds and other forms of aid from those organisations that shows they are in violation of Cuban law.
Karen Wald
Havana Cuba
Phelps on bulk billing
Australian Medical Association president Kerryn Phelps claims middle-income people can afford significant general practitioner fees. By this logic, GPs can live quite adequately without charging patients significant amounts. And middle-income people can afford higher taxes to increase bulk-billing rates.
Dr Phelps compares health services to hairdressing and other user-pays services. But health care is different. Medical services are vitally important to people's wellbeing and are needed when people are already disadvantaged by illness or injury. Moreover, some people need far more care than others — often as a result of misfortune.
These factors help explain why non-luxury medical treatment costs should be overwhelmingly paid for by the community rather than by patients. Private medical insurance is inferior to tax-funded Medicare because the former is administratively more costly and regressively charges rich and poor the same premium rate. Taxation, by contrast, increases with ability to pay.
Brent Howard
Rydalmere NSW
Cowardice
The United States of America has committed an act of cowardice in Iraq.
America demanded sanctions to contain Saddam Hussein after the Gulf war. The sanctions reduced Iraq to military insignificance. Then the US invaded.
The United States has squandered the admiration and trust that it enjoyed among people everywhere. How many extra soldiers will be needed to compensate for the loss of the world's respect?
Gordon Pratt
Dunnottar Canada
US bleeding Iraq dry
The United States and its conspirators, Britain and Australia, invaded Iraq without justification and in contravention of international law. In overthrowing Saddam Hussein's regime they killed and maimed thousands of Iraqis. Now Bush claims that they are going to rebuild Iraq and give the Iraqi people better conditions than they have had in generations.
But who is going to fund this rebuilding. The aggressors should be the ones who foot the bill, not the Iraqi people. The US is busy awarding contracts for the reconstruction to their own companies. Instead of contracts being awarded on the basis of merit in an open and transparent way, the US has simply cashed in on Iraqi suffering.
Not only are the major contracts going to US companies but the US, Britain and Australia are seeking to exploit Iraqi oil reserves in order to fund the reconstruction program. They know that their actions in Iraq were and are illegal. As an illegal military occupation force they have no legal right to Iraqi oil. They don't own it and they can't legally dispose of it. But legality has never stood in the way of the US mentality of "getting the job done".
The US and its conspirators are now demanding the United Nations lift sanctions against Iraq, and give legitimacy to both the illegal invasion and acquisition of Iraqi oil. Prior to the invasion, the US claimed they weren't invading because of oil. Yet it is that oil they want to control in order to fund the US companies who have been given the reconstruction projects on a platter.
Iraqi oil shouldn't fund the reconstruction. The US, Britain and Australia should be made to pay war reparations for the reconstruction. Contracts should be awarded on the basis of merit to companies chosen by representatives from the Iraqi people, not Iraqi expatriates ferried in by the USA.
Adam Bonner
Meroo Meadow NSW
From Green Left Weekly, May 7, 2003.
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