Fortress Australia
Thank you for Iggy Kim's writings on "Fortress Australia". It is a grim reminder of what inhumanities are committed daily to maintain our charming capitalist culture.
A neighbour of mine is a lawyer working in the field of refugee issues. She recently told me of a case of an elderly woman who lived most of the last few decades in Kuwait because her husband was an Iraqi oppositionist.
When he died she lost her resident rights under the Islamic code as practised by Kuwait. She couldn't return to Iraq for fear of her life and Kuwait expelled her.
She had several sons in Australia but couldn't jump enough of the immigration hurdles to get here. She came on a tourist visa and claimed refuge when she arrived. Her's was one of the cases in that "illegal Iraqi refugee scam" scandal that the government beat up last year (remember how that came and went in the flicker of an eye).
It was a heart-rending story: an elderly woman, victimised by sexism and imperialism, hounded from her home only to wind up being used as cannon fodder by a racist government in Australia. I don't know the outcome yet, but isn't this reminiscent of what happened to Jews fleeing Hitler before World War II?
Sydney
Language imperialism?
I was recently much taken aback by a man handing out information on socialism. He classified himself as a "true socialist", not one of those of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ or Resistance [types].
I had heard him trying to converse with a woman on socialist policy, which was dear to her heart. She said in broken English that she would love to talk with him but couldn't because of her poor grasp of English. I took the opportunity to give her a pamphlet on Esperanto — that "believed to be defunct", artificial language.
The ridicule I received was astounding. I explained to him that the main thrust of the information he was distributing concerned the adverse effects of "western imperialism" in military, commercial and political systems. He simply could not grasp (or didn't want to) that the imposition of language represented any type of imperialism whatsoever.
Esperanto may not be a perfect solution, but it is well on the road to those ideals of neutrality, equality and ease of learning — while providing effective communication. Learn another language by all means, but if you want to communicate quickly, effectively, and [in a manner] approaching equality with other language groups, learn Esperanto!
Cheltenham NSW
[Abridged.]
Sydney airports
Graham Harrison's arguments against building an airport at Badgerys Creek (Write On, GLW #365) are sound. However, I am concerned that he appears to uncritically accept what is the fundamental flaw in the position of both the present Liberal and former ALP governments — that is, the argument that what is needed is a second airport for Sydney.
This argument both masks and reveals the government's real intention, which is to continue to develop Kingsford Smith as Sydney's main airport indefinitely into the future, whilst pretending to be looking for a suitable site for a second or overflow airport.
In reality, the only acceptable solution to the Sydney airport problem is not a second airport but a replacement airport, built either out at sea or in any event in an environmentally acceptable location outside the Sydney Basin. The Goulburn Plain is one possible location, but there are others.
Tasmania
Communications infrastructure
A socialist "national competition policy" would maintain the state monopoly of the physical infrastructure of Australia's communication network (ground and orbiting), and allow private companies and cooperatives to lease the use of 91×ÔÅÄÂÛ̳ of this network.
This would create the conditions for the development of a diverse range of private/state/community partnerships in digital communication while allowing the state to ultimately control, as well as draw a "rent" from profitable investments. It would also provide the opportunity for cross-subsidisation across state sectors.
An economically rational policy for pay TV, for example, would have created a state monopoly of the physical network, while allowing firms and cooperatives of all sizes access at a reasonable rent. That may have led to the creation of pay TV services that were worthwhile, instead of the nauseating rubbish on offer from big business media.
Stepney SA
The Australian authorities have introduced myxomatosis, which blinds and decimates both wild and pet rabbits, and more recently, rabbit calicivirus disease into Australia. RCD is a little known deadly haemorrhagic virus of mammals which overseas scientists say may affect species other than rabbits, including humans.
In Australia, the only legal way to release the RCD virus is by trapping and injecting rabbits with RCD and releasing them to infect their peers. At present there is an application before the Australian NRA to register live RCD-coated baits.
In New Zealand, the only other country in the world to use RCD baits to kill wild rabbits, RCD-infected rabbits have been seen taking weeks to die while their ears rot away. Such "ear-rot" has happened nowhere else in the world and scientists are puzzled.
Also, high levels of RCD anti-bodies have been found in NZ cats and other animals, and NZ researchers also state that RCD baits actually vaccinate some of the wild rabbits. To legalise and spread RCD baits in Australia is both irresponsible and dangerous.
Anyone wishing to write to the NRA voicing opposition to the introduction of RCD baits should write to: PO Box E240, Kingston, ACT 2604. Information about RCD is on the internet at Rabbit Information Service .
Riverton WA
[Abridged.]
Kosova
GLW has carried some excellent articles supporting the Kosovars — and said many true things about NATO's role. NATO bombed Serbia because it saw Milosevic's brutality was inflaming Albanian nationalism and so destabilising existing state borders.
But why suggest that NATO intervened to stop the KLA as they were about to drive out Milosevic? Why suggest that Serbia had some good anti-imperialist grounds for its war effort? Why denounce only NATO as "imperialist", while Serbia's was the more destructive imperialism?
Why call for "arm the Kosovars" only in muffled small print: "... removal of all restrictions on the ability of the Kosovar Albanians to defend themselves"? Why obscure the difference between NATO aiming to control Kosovar nationalism by measured concessions, and Milosevic, to destroy it by genocide?
An anti-NATO stance which has to pretend that the "imperialism of free trade" is no different from the imperialism of genocide is not stronger, but weaker, than one which recognises the facts but calls for an independent working-class "Third Camp". And a solidarity with the Kosovars against Milosevic's genocide which is proclaimed forthrightly as the central issue is more worthy of socialists than one which can win its place only as an appendix to routine anti-NATO slogans.
Martin Thomas
Graceville Qld