Anti-nuclear movement
Tom Kelly's article, "Uranium debate puts profits before safety" (GLW #158), is a timely reminder of the need to rebuild the anti-nuclear movement. Far from diminishing, the threat from the nuclear fuel cycle is on the increase. He cites the likely scrapping of the ALP's 3 mines policy, the release of "highly enriched uranium from nuclear warheads and stockpiles, particularly the CIS", the sorry state of nuclear facilities in the former USSR, and Indonesia's proposed reactors as cause for concern.
He correctly points to the lack of a mass anti-nuclear movement as making dropping the 3 mines policy likely. No amount of lobbying of delegates, unless backed up by big business or big mobilisations, is likely to have an impact on the ALP conference — even if the focus of the anti-nuclear lobby is switched from economic viability to health and human survival.
As a delegate (from the postal workers' union) to the South Australian ALP state conference in 1986 (a few short weeks after Chernobyl) I witnessed the contempt of many delegates towards the anti-nuclear protesters outside the hall. Even leading lights of the "left", such as Don Dunstan, simply sneered at and dismissed the protesters' demands to close Roxby Downs uranium mine. Those currently lobbying the ALP to end uranium mining have little chance of success without the backing of a mass movement on the streets.
Ray Fulcher
Melbourne
[Edited for length.]
A woman's right
Recently, in an edition of my student newspaper the Tertangala (University of Wollongong), I read a letter condemning abortion. The letter purported that abortion was murder and tried to establish this as truth on the unsound premise that life begins at birth. As I read I became more and more irate and was shocked that such a fundamentalist attitude could still provoke resistance on what is essentially a woman's right to chose.
As a "woman's right to choose" it should not be subjected to the laws of high moralising nor the laws of patriarchal society. Abortion, I feel, is an issue regarding women's health and exists regardless of whether people feel it is wrong or right. I propose we have a system where the choice to terminate does not necessitate paying out a lot of money and becomes the simple medical procedure that it is.
Pro-Choice is not about pushing abortion, it's about fighting for free, safe and legal abortion. I'd hate to see abortion become what it was in the past. Horror stories such as women trying to perform their own abortions by consuming rat poison is a terrifying circumstance that patriarchal society forced women into. Our bodies are our own and as such we have the right to determine our own sexuality.
The Pro-Lifer also failed to see that Pro-Choice is about other issues such as childcare and contraceptives — educating the public about them and making them easily accessible and free.
The choice to have an abortion is never easy and to make it illegal and to tie it to morality only makes a difficult decision even more so. No group can decide on an issue that is essentially the choice of the woman involved. It will only be through the repeal of all abortion laws that women can take control of their own bodies, and their own lives.
Rachel Eldred
North Wollongong NSW
[Edited for length.]
Population explosion
There are people such as Anne Rampa (GLW write on 7/9/94) within the left and feminist movement who share with extreme Catholics and Moslems a religious belief in the triumph of humanity. These people believe that with the help of "Marxist" principles, feminist spirituality or divine intervention, all of humanity's problems can be overcome. They refuse to understand that there are natural limitations to human expansion and consumption.
Anne Rampa claims that the third world is fed contraceptives instead of food. This claim ignores the huge unmet demand for contraception in the third world. It ignores the plight of children who will be born to the destitute to grow up in misery. And it ignores environmentalist concern which recognizes the hugely unfair share of resources used by each additional person in the developed world. A better world requires both a fairer distribution of resources and a reversal of population growth.
The religious "left" take American support for population control as evidence that population control is a device to maintain the capitalist economic system. It certainly is. The capitalist economic system will fail if the population explosion continues — but so will all other possible economic systems. Population explosions in any biological system are terminated by the harsh forces of nature. Unchecked, the human population explosion will necessarily lead to a population collapse through famine, disease and warfare.
David Kault
Townsville QLD
Cuba
There are several aspects of the Cuban crisis that seem to have escaped the press here and in Europe.
1/ Comparisons are constantly made with the "large-scale" exodus to the USA from Mariel in 1980.
125,000 Cubans left Mariel for Florida in 1980, when the total population was 10,000,000. This means that 1
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2/ All Cubans are armed (or have access to arms) because of constant fear of an American invasion. They could easily use these weapons against police or soldiers, but they never have in 35 years of the Revolution. Have you ever, in the last 35 years, seen on TV Cuban police officers attacking civilians with tear gas, dogs, clubs etc?
3/ We get a steady diet of "news about Cuba" always from the point of view of the Cubans in Miami. Recently Fidel made a 2
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4/ The Cuban government has always allowed people to emigrate to the USA if they wish. The problem is that the US government grants very few visas to Cubans, who thus cannot arrive legally by plane (which would not be dramatic). But they have always been encouraged to hijack boats and to sail to Florida, arriving illegally as persecuted aliens — which is dramatic and newsworthy and TV-worthy (and very dangerous).
5/ Last year the US trade blockade of Cuba was condemned in the UN by 87 votes to 3; yet it continues. The US also pressures other countries not to trade with Cuba, and blocks Cuban government investments abroad, at the same time trading with other "subversive" countries like North Korea, China and Vietnam.
Rosemary Evans
St Kilda Vic
[Edited for length.]
Medical complaints
I read with great interest Tim Anderson's letter in your September 7 issue. Tim holds a very high position in my estimation but I am in a quandary.
He states that the Bar Council has a central role in the complaints process (unlike the medical profession).
I may have misunderstood this statement but I feel readers should be aware that health consumers are just as disadvantaged in getting justice against the medical profession or other health providers as they would be against the elite of the legal profession.
If they go to court they have a double disadvantage in that they find it very difficult to get medical evidence in their favour. My friend Barry Hart can confirm that. He had to go overseas to obtain such assistance. Despite winning a case against Dr. Herron the Medical Defence Union keep appealing in an attempt to wear him down.
If you decide instead to take a complaint to the new Health Care Complaints Commission, (possibly the old Complaints Unit with a new name and glossy image?) your chances of any justice are very slim.
We now prefer to advise our members to go instead to their MP and directly to the Minister of Health, though that is not always effective either.
Barbara Wright
President, Medical Consumers Association of NSW
[Edited for length.]
Taslima Nasreen
I was unable to join the 24,000 other people at the Melbourne International Feminist Book Fair as reported on by Rose McCann (GLW 31/8/94). However, two other North Queensland women did. I was dismayed when they informed me of this great gathering's silence over the treatment of Bangladesh feminist writer Taslima Nasreen.
McCann used fine rhetoric about "the power of women's everyday experiences to be a mobilising force". Yet it seems, no-one at the "International" Book Fair got off their backsides to organise a petition, issue a press statement or raise a few dollars to support this courageous woman.
Too often these days middle class and academic people launch careers writing about experiences they've never had, suffered by people they'd never mix with. For them the label "feminist" is a cover for the old-fashioned pursuit of money and status.
Feminism, at its best, is not a career or a means to one. It is a movement prepared to act to change the world for all women, especially those on the bottom of the social pile. Without that sort of commitment McCann's "smorgasbord of intellectual and spiritual nourishment" will be a bland banquet for the privileged.
I hope someone will tell me that my informants were wrong — that they merely missed the petitions, press statements and fund raising calls supporting Taslima Nasreen. If not, I blow a huge raspberry at the organizers of the Sixth International Women's Book Fair.
Christina Dwyer
Nerada Qld