Modern ALP is a joke
I’m writing to comment on the interview with Andrew Ferguson in GLW #872. Was this a joke or fair dinkum?
Ferguson (and the dynasty he comes from) seems to me to represent everything that is wrong with the ALP.
Another union boss who never worked in the industry in which he was supposed to represent construction workers (three weeks or something as a stonemasons’ labourer ain’t what I call experience in everyday battling to survive).
It was about him and his clique’s strive to survive at the expense of workers so that he could get a seat in parliament.
I’ve been a construction worker in various states and territories in Australia as well as the UK for 40 years and people like him make me want to chunder.
Fortunately, I’ve known many great leaders over the years from both my industry and others. Ferguson never was and never will be one of them.
I don’t care if he’s so-called left wing, right wing or chicken wing, the modern ALP is a joke. No wonder the poor old tree of knowledge in Barcaldine died. So has what the ALP is meant to stand for – a fair deal for the working class of Austrlia and the cause that never dies against the rich and powerful.
Bob Mancour.
North Geelong, VIC.
Trust Libyan resistance on West’s role
The GLW editorial “Libya: West’s bombs no solution” (GLW #874) deserves a response. Its reasoning is confused.
We are rightly warned of the “West’s” hypocrisy and lack of credibility concerning its expressed humanitarian motives for its current involvement.
But we are given little reason to reach the conclusion that “Libya is the West’s latest imperialist war”.
The “jury’ is still out on that. We are told that: “Libya is bombed by the west.” Not so.
Gaddafi’s military hardware and infrastructure has been targeted, not “Libya”, giving the Transitional National Council (TNC) based in Benghazi an opportunity to challenge the Gaddafi family/tribal dictatorship on a more level basis.
It is platitudinous to state, “The Libyan rebels deserve support in their struggle to overthrow Gaddafi”, and then offer irrelevant advice about what should have been the response i.e. “the provision of badly needed anti-aircraft weapons”.
There are a lot of “shoulds” one can raise “after the event”. Given the urgency of the threat to Benghazi and the vile language of the apparently “unhinged” Gaddafi and Sons, as a member of the TNC I wouldn’t be concerned about sticking to the text book “correct procedure” in holding on to and extending political power in Libya.
Great revolutionary strategists such as Lenin and Trotsky were not averse to “parleying with the devil” in their prosecution of the civil war in Russia. They were pragmatic when necessary. They were active revolutionaries, not “arm-chair theorists”.
It is not clear that Libya is “the West’s latest imperialist War”. The TNC has insisted that no UN/NATO ground troops will be permitted on Libyan soil but have asked for heavy weapons and humanitarian aid. They are the masters of their own destiny, such as it is and not mere pawns of Western imperialism.
There is a civil war going on in Libya and I am content to trust the TNC to use whatever resources they can get from UN/NATO as long as it is on their terms, not on terms dictated by the West.
Remember for all his bombast, Gaddafi more recently was selling out Libya to the highest bidder since becoming a supine supporter of international capitalist hegemony.
The editorial is trying to knock a “square peg into a round hole”. The arguments don’t fit the purpose. The issues are more complicated than described in the editorial and readers deserve better analysis than this inaccurate, poorly argued piece.
Dave Bell,
Orange, NSW
Israel next in line for uprising
We live in momentous times, with people who have long been denied fairness, liberty, equality and democracy struggling for their just rights.
In the past few months the world has witnessed earth-shattering events in the Middle East, with popular uprisings that began in Tunisia and have since spread to Egypt, Yemen, Libya, Bahrain and Syria.
Unrest and protests have also broken out in many other countries. These people’s rebellions continue to shake the region and beyond, reshaping the political landscape like never before and making the various brutal, despotic regimes everywhere tremble in fear of the spread of revolt.
It is only a matter of time before other peoples rise up too.
In Israel, for instance, the long-suffering Palestinian people have been waiting impatiently for the world to implement international law and the many UN resolutions that call for an end to the illegal Israeli occupation of the Palestinian territories and the building of Israeli settlements on occupied land.
As long as the Palestine tragedy remains unresolved, and the dispossessed Palestinian people live under a repressive occupation, they will continue to seethe and resist.
I’m sure the subjugated and wretched people of the Palestinian territories are looking at the developments surrounding them with great admiration and inspiration.
They have had enough of waiting for the international community to restore their legitimate national, civil and human rights and in their dire situation must feel they have nothing to lose by rising again in revolt.
The world has for far too long allowed this injustice to simmer and fester and permitted Israel to continue its cruel and arrogant intransigence. Now the tide has turned dramatically, with the loss of its Egyptian ally and unrest sweeping all around it, Israel must be feeling extremely isolated and fearful about this situation of its own making.
Denying justice and persisting to brutally treat an oppressed people never leads to peaceful change, but makes continuing conflict inevitable.
The time is coming when Israel will lament the opportunities it had to give some concessions and solve the Palestine problem. It will be the next in line for rebellion.
Steven Katsineris,
Hurstbridge. Vic.
Support Rhiannon, NSW Greens on BDS
There are Australian racists, thieves and murderers but law officers saying so are certainly not anti-Australian — they are simply doing their duty as politicians, police, prosecutors or judges in the public interest.
Race-based, nuclear terrorist, racist Zionist-run Apartheid Israel is involved in de facto racism, theft and murder as well as mass imprisonment and ethnic cleansing.
Full marks then to decent, anti-racist humanitarians like Greens senator-elect Lee Rhiannon, who correctly argue for the global BDS (boycott, divestment and sanctions) movement against Apartheid Israel just as decent people around the world successfully supported similar sanctions against Apartheid South Africa.
Numerous anti-racist Jews in Australia and around the world condemn the Palestinian genocide being conducted by Apartheid Israel (for a compendium of such eminent opinions Google “Jews Against Racist Zionism”).
Thus, for example, Sir Isaac Isaacs, Australia’s first Australian-born Governor-General and arguably Australia’s most eminent Jew (1946): “The honour of Jews throughout the world demands the renunciation of political Zionism.”
Lib-Labs and Zionists who support the genocidal, Jewry- and Judaism-defaming crimes of Apartheid Israel and who reject the moral advice of outstanding anti-racist Jews are complicit in Zionist anti-Jewish anti-Semitism and anti-Arab anti-Semitism that soils Australia.
Dr Gideon Polya,
Macleod, Vic.