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Letters may be e-mailed to guardian@cpa.org.au.
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Letters to the Editor:
Justice, not charity
The Howard Government can play with $37 billion in an election budget, but at the same time has cut its modest aid to East Timor. I was in Dili recently and our group visited a family who told us they were hungry. Even so, they brought out some corn and boiled bananas to share with us. They rarely eat meat, saying that they would have a chicken on "happy Christmas". In East Timor, this family's situation is normal. However, they want justice, not charity. East Timor is requesting that the dispute over its sea border with Australia be settled by using the internationally accepted standard of a median line, that is, half-way. Such a border would ensure for East Timor a consistent income, about US$12 billion over 20 years, which would enable the nation to feed and employ its citizens without going into debt. Since 1999, Australia has taken resources worth a million dollars a day from areas of the Timor Sea whose ownership is under dispute, a total of $2 billion, a sum which dwarfs any aid we've given to Timor. Australia is also claiming at least 60 percent of the resources which lie on East Timor's side of a median line, and has withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Tribunal for the Law of the Sea so that there won't be an umpire to interfere. Can you imagine the outcry if the Timorese were claiming resources on our side of a half-way line? Sister Susan Connelly
Mary Mackillop Institute of East Timorese Studies
The Howard Government are very vague about when exactly they learnt of US and British military abuse of prisoners in Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo and Afghani prisons but they certainly should have been expecting it or is this yet another example of "flawed intelligence"? Around 1985 the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) library in Canberra received from the UN, a copy of the CIA Torture Manual. I know because I read and copied it there. This infamous handbook details all manner of assassination and "interrogation" techniques and advises their use against teachers, nurses, agronomists, technicians and civic leaders in "enemy" villages and towns so that these may be maximally destabilised. The book was the basis for the curriculum at the School of the Americas (now known as the Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation) in Fort Benning, Georgia. Notorious Latin American military killers were trained there like Panama's Manuel Noriega and those involved in the slaughter of six Jesuit priests in 1989 in El Salvador. Nineteen years should have been enough time for John Howard to have read this manual but then, maybe he's a slow reader. Gareth Smith
Byron Bay NSW
The horrendous torture of Iraqi prisoners by USA agents is a grim lesson of capitalism's plans for domination. The revelation has drawn the blind on the British Army's torture and murder of Iraqi civilians and combatants. During the illegal occupation of Ireland's six Counties since 1921 multiple murders have taken place by British agents, hidden until the last stage of our freedom struggle — Pat Finucane, Rosemary Nelson, Marie Drumm, Bloody Sunday. There was the murderous attack on Bernadette Devlin-McAlskey's family, Jenny Drumm, Alex Maskey — on the list goes. The burning of farms, the destruction of livestock, the British propaganda machine portraying it as religious conflict, not a freedom struggle. Notice Blair's attempted apology in France, no admission, Iraqi parents have searched for their children and want answers from the Brits. Today's news report of young soldiers in Townsville, Queensland, burning kittens, they have been fined and must do community work for RSPCA. The new world order brings with it a brutal ugliness, unknown in any civilization. Anne Duffy-Lindsay
Surry Hills, NSW
When is the ALP going to acknowledge the "real" unemployment figures? On the 7.30 Report on Thursday May 13, Mark Latham allowed Kerry O'Brian to give credibility to the Government's 5.7 percent unemployment claims. These figures are couched in misinformation that is legitimised by the manipulation of the ABS figures. Over 30 percent of workers are underemployed, this is one of the highest figures in all OECD countries. Part-time and casual workers, even those working only two hours a week, are counted as employed yet few earn a living wage today. How can the Government justify ignoring those who live in poverty? Suicide, mental health, child poverty, violence, crime and homelessness have become real social problems and all the government has done is to ignore families living in poverty today. Mark Latham missed the opportunity to tell the real story on the Tonight show. The TAFE announcement may sound good but TAFE has been in crisis since devolution ten years ago. Over 40,000 students are turned away every year. The Government move to privatise TAFE colleges is a microcosm of their community policy. Half the lecturers are casual workers. They work up to 15 hours unpaid and TAFE counselling services closed down at a time when the service should have been increased. There is no strategic plan and no commitment to training for future projects. The concept of individual business centres has been a complete failure and is seen as a step towards privatisation. This has left TAFE in complete crisis, a basket case. Instead of being the hub of the community TAFE has become another arm of private education that ignores the very students it was originally designed for. Mary Jenkins,Back to index page
Secretary
Australian National Organisation for the Unemployed (ANOU)