Bob Gould
Green Left Weekly discussion list, June 18, 2006
Tom O’Lincoln, Scott Hamilton and my good friend Greg Adler on Marxmail, and others on the Green Left list, are battering away at the DSP for supporting the 1999 Australian intervention in East Timor.
A Woman of Independence, by Kirsty Sword Gusmao, Pan McMillan Australia, 2003
Jenny Haines
Orthodox Marxists, Trotskyists and anarchists may wonder why this book is being reviewed on Ozleft. After all it is written by a woman who does not claim to be a socialist or a Marxist, but an activist in the cause of national liberation for East Timor.
Bob Gould
Tom O’Lincoln is a master of the short grab/jab designed to score a point, often a pretty ultraleft one. The little item on Jose Ramos Horta, the death penalty and the Iraq UN bombing is vintage Tom. This matter requires a bit of consideration and some careful investigation.
Bob Gould
The current Marxmail debate over Timor has both a concrete immediate aspect, and a Marxist theoretical dimension. I’ll deal with the concrete aspect first.
Bob Gould
I write this letter as an old agitator against imperialism and its various wars. I’ve never met you, although I’ve heard you speak on a number of occasions at public meetings during your long and frequently lonely campaign for self-determination for your oppressed homeland, East Timor.
Since the crisis in East Timor erupted I have marched in a number of demonstrations, supporting the demand that there should be immediate United Nations military intervention in Timor, led by Australian troops. I have frequently found myself marching alongside an energetic and forceful group of female drummers, some of them called I believe, the Feral Fingers and a number of my fellow protesters have laughed at the picture of an old Vietnam antiwar agitator like myself marching to the war drums.
