Below we post a selection of recent letters to the World Socialist Web Site.
Dear editor,
I enjoyed reading Nick Beams’s critique of Keith Windschuttle’s book very much.
Windschuttle’s central thesis, namely, that the aboriginal population of Tasmania was responsible for its own demise, reminded me eerily of the history text books which I was subjected to whilst undergoing Christian National Education in Apartheid South Africa.
According to the authors of these text books, ancient hunter-gatherer societies in the Cape Colony supposedly self-destructed after coming into contact with European settlers.
However, this is not borne out by the evidence, which clearly demonstrates that a genocidal war was carried out against the San hunter-gatherers, involving settler “extermination commandos”, authorised by the British colonial authorities.
Of course, portraying indigenous people as the authors of their own destruction served a definite political purpose in Apartheid South Africa; giving Apartheid a thin veneer of political legitimacy and promoting ideas about the self-destructive and irrational behaviour of black South Africans.
Windschuttle’s crude fabrication, as Nick Beams points out, is also a manifestation of a sharp rightward lurch experienced by so many academics. However, it also serves to poison the political atmosphere, preparing the ground for a new offensive against the most vulnerable sections of the Australian population.
It is worth noting that Hitler’s objections to the type of anti-Semitism propagated by various organisations in the volkische movement in Germany was that their racism was based not on reason, but on emotion. Hitler sought a more “scholarly” basis for his racial anti-Semitism.
The popularity of Mr. Windschuttle amongst certain elements is because he is cloaking the filthiest of sentiments in “scholarly” garments.
Yours,
EG
18 September 2003
* * *On “The CIA leak case through the lens of the Wall Street Journal”
Dear Bill,
The first time I heard that the Bush administration was attempting to pass off the case of the outed CIA agent as mere Democratic partisan politics, I knew we were in for more of the childish whining we’ve already seen in the matter of Iraq’s alleged WMD. Now that no weapons are to be found (although the media clings to the belief that finding evidence that Saddam “may have been prepared to start manufacturing them” will answer for invasion and murder) and the excuse for going to war has been exposed as a lie, the administration is attempting to convince the public that Saddam Hussein “tricked” them by pretending he had weapons of mass destruction! In other words, according to this latest scenario, Hussein was so evil that he deliberately made it appear as though he was developing WMD in order to goad the US into invading his country, just to make the Bush administration look bad! It would be beyond belief if I hadn’t already had to believe so many things before breakfast.
And now, after exacting retribution from another person who has made the Bush administration look bad—Joseph Wilson— the same distracting tactics are being put to use. We, the public, are supposed to forget that someone in the administration committed a felony by exposing a CIA agent. We are meant to believe that the real story here is that the Democratic Party is playing election politics by being so gauche as to mention it!
By the way, the local news here this morning ran a story that it seemed to think was news to the rest of us. The newsreader said, somewhat breathlessly, that the trucks that the Bush administration previously claimed were mobile weapons labs have actually turned out to be—shock, amazement—exactly what everyone else said they were: for filling hydrogen weather balloons! Since we’ve known for months that this is exactly what the trucks were for, and moreover that they were manufactured in the UK for just this purpose, how can passing this off as a revelation be allowed to go unchallenged?
CZ
3 October 2003
* * *That reply by the Wall Street Journal makes me sick, but what do we expect? They are all working together against us, the common people. Maybe we still shall survive.
MK
3 October 2003
* * *Thank you for your extremely informative site. What the governments here in Australia need is a lesson in humanity. Howard jumped in with Blair and Bush, completely went against the Australian people and our way of life. Now the lies that are coming out, it’s sickening. People can be asked in any Aussie state what they think of Bush, most agree he should be had up on charges for war crimes. His puppets should be close behind. At least Mr. Wilkie had the nerve to speak out instead of falling into line. There is a federal election coming up soon, the lies will really be poured out then, Howard is trying to convince people the war was for the good of mankind. He must take us for fools, we have seen those poor people on TV. No one should suffer the way they have and still are. America should get out of Iraq, then other countries can help to repair the damage then leave the people in peace. America has no rights to select Iraq’s president. Just where do they get off?
AG
17 September 2003
* * *On “As Washington readies ‘reconstruction’: Iraqis riot over unemployment, corruption”
Great article again. What a great line: “That being said, the venality that characterizes the Bush administration and the layer of corporate criminals that constitute its principal base is so uncontrolled that they are incapable of organizing the occupation of Iraq as anything but a looting operation.” That really sums up what is being done.
Bush and his criminal corporate gang of “terrorists” have done more to destroy the average US citizen’s well being than any “Islamic terrorists” (real or imagined) have ever done. With the likes of Enron, Tyson, Worldcom, Global Crossing, Halliburton, Bechtel and others, corporate terrorists have and continue to rape and pillage the US taxpayers and their employees. And the Bushies answer to this criminal spree—to indict Martha Stewart for “insider trading” of a company she was not an insider of. The truly criminal roam free while the not-so-well connected go to jail—justice Bush style.
G
2 October 2003