(The following letter from Australian anti-war and Latin American solidarity activist Joan Coxsedge—who is also a former member of the Victoria state parliament--originally appeared in an Australian-Cuban solidarity group’s newsletter)
"April 26, 2015
"Dear Comrades,
"Anzac Day has come and gone. Thank god.
When I was a kid, it was a day of reflection and sadness, a quiet day to
remember the terrible devastation and loss of our young, not only in Gallipoli
but during the four appalling years of war when every second family suffered a
bereavement and two in every three Australians in uniform were ether killed or
wounded, some so terribly they were kept out of sight. And at war’s end, the great
army of damaged silent men returned home.
"No jingoism, no glorification, just
deep private grief with no bodies or gravestones. In their place, memorials
sprung up throughout the land with a digger on top sporting a slouched hat. On
the sides, the names of the dead carved in stone. Not a noble war fought for noble motives but a war between
empires for control of trade.
"But in this 100th anniversary year, Gallipoli has become
an ‘event’, the ‘place to be’ along with the
nonsensical ‘when we came of age’, and we’ve been swamped
with hard-sell commercialised pro-war drivel that plumbed new depths with ‘Camp Gallipoli’ where deluded
idiots shelled out their hard-earned to camp under the stars for ‘an authentic
Gallipoli experience’ minus the stench of
the dead, the mud, the shellfire, the fear, the madness and rancid food.
"PM
Abbott babbled on about ‘magnificent defeat’ and ‘terrible victory’ after trying to cut
back the wages of serving soldiers and reducing their pensions. Did he know that the bombs raining down on the Anzacs while
trapped on the beach were sold to the Turks by the British company Woolwich
Arsenal? Imagine
their fury. And their anger at the wholesale corruption that infests our
society, the growing gap between rich and poor, the ‘terror raids’ with police bashing
down doors and the disgraceful attack on trade unions by a hand-picked
anti-worker royal commission.
"And what about the almost-signed
Trans-Pacific Partnership, a secretive agreement being rammed through without
any public debate. ‘Partnership’? My foot. The TPP’s been cooked up by
giant corporations with no democratic input.
"In November 2013, Julian Assange
released a 95-page draft text of the proposed chapter on ‘Intellectual
Property Rights’ that laid out the
provisions to institute a far-reaching transnational legal and enforcement
regime with implications for individual rights, civil liberties, publishing,
internet service providers and internet privacy as well as for anything
creative, intellectual and environmental. Litigation tribunals to which
sovereign national courts are expected to defer will have no human rights
safeguards.
"As Julian Assange says: ‘If instituted, the TPP’s regime would
trample over individual rights and free expression…If you read, write,
publish, think, listen, dance, sing or invent; if you farm or consume food; if
you’re ill now or might
be one day, the TPP has you in its crosshairs.’
"But the rich will do very nicely thank
you. I keep raising the TPP because once
it’s signed, that’s it. And when you look at the Federal Liberal
goose in charge of negotiating with the Yankees, Andrew Robb (’great opportunities
for business’), you know we’re going to be done
like a dinner.
John Pilger reminds us of the war we’ve continued to
wage against our own indigenous people, one we don’t care to talk
about. Abbott slashed $534 million from indigenous social programmes, with$160
million from health and $13.4 million from their legal aid budgets. To our
shame, the number of Aboriginal people hospitalised for self-harm has
increased, especially among the young, but Abbott then had the gall to attack a
long standing commitment to homelands as a ‘lifestyle
choice’. As bad as apartheid South Africa?
"In the last few days, a number of US
media outlets have reported that the US State Department is claiming that the
Cuban and US governments are discussing the potential removal of Cuba from its
list of ‘State Sponsors of
Terrorism’ with the suggestion
that an issue under review is the return of various US revolutionaries and
radicals currently living in exile in Cuba. One is Assata Shakur who was given political
asylum in Cuba in 1984 after escaping from a New Jersey prison five years
earlier.
"Assata had been convicted of
murder in 1977 over the death of Trooper Foerster despite the absence of
fingerprints on any weapon or powder residue on her hands. She was shot twice
while her arms were raised, paralysing her right arm, making it impossible for
her to fire a gun, and was then shot again from the back. Taken to hospital,
she was threatened, beaten and tortured and later convicted in a trial she
described as a ‘legal lynching’.
"In
1979, a delegation from the UN Commission on Human Rights visited Assata in
prison and reported that political activists like her had been selectively
targeted for provocation, false arrests, entrapment, fabrication of evidence
and false criminal prosecutions. A reminder of
Washington’s appalling
treatment of the Cuban Five.
"We live in demented times but no
amount of money or trade could justify sending good comrades back to the hell
of US prisons. Anyone negotiating with
Washington crooks needs a long spoon and permanent amnesia. The US breaks
treaties with impunity, from old ones with Native Americans to recent ones with
Ukraine to confine the eastward expansion of NATO, even to reparation promised
to Vietnam but never paid.
"Cuba knows America’s track record better than most. Hated
by Washington since its successful Revolution, but respected and admired by
millions around the world who believe that fighting US imperialism is a just
and worthy cause. Freedom is non-negotiable. Viva Cuba!
"Joan Coxsedge"
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