Letters To The Editor

A job well done

Keen Street - what a wonderful transformation in three and a half months. Congratulations to all Council staff and contractors who worked on the upgrade.

We're maintaining the growth of Lismore!

Cr Graham Meineke
East Lismore

The truth is out there

Responding in agreement with Sophie Hoeben "An Enlightened Echo" (Echo, April 14).

Regarding Promise Keepers. Whilst founded in America they are alive and well here in Aussie land, and are promoted by some Pentecostal movements. The concept for this group originated from Vineyard Church in America.

The founder Bill McCarthy stated that homosexuality is "an abomination of God" and "gays and lesbians do not deserve equal rights because they do not reproduce."

Promise Keepers leadership is fiercely homophobic, anti-choice, and ill-natured toward women. They view their wives as "weaker vessels" and "Women were intended by God to be helpers to men." It scapegoats women, gays and lesbians whom have struggled for equality, blaming them for society's problems.

The history of patriarchal religious ideologies clearly reveals that they condone sexist-based social factions, and always have.

Traditionally and biblical, the tenets of Christianity regard women as inferior. Strangely, Christian women add considerable strength to this by supporting the church as a whole.

This imaginary Christian supernatural male creator notion is strongly entrenched in all Christian denominations.

The ecumenical movement is a 20th century invention designed to bring all forms of "Christian" religion under one umbrella to show a united front.

Should not "real" truth be the most sought after commodity in the world today? So what is "Truth"?

In my opinion organised religion is detrimental to humanity as a whole. If we are not vigilant, all that has been fought for and won in the name of freedom of choice could be lost by theocratic fundamentalism.

Jim Lee
Alstonville

Letter from the editor

Thanks to Sophia Hoeben (Echo, April 14) for finally enlightening me as to the subject of her letter "New Battle, Old War" in the April Nimbin GoodTimes.

The Promise Keepers are indeed a particularly nasty all-male organisation of fascist US Christian fundamentalists, and it's probably worth doing a feature on them. It's a pity Ms Hoeben failed to mention them in her letter, and even in my post-publication phone conversation with her, she couldn't remember the group's name, nor even the TV program she saw about them.

Without that vital detail, the original letter was full of unsubstantiated generalisations, suggesting "the christian (sic) right-wing" is exclusively male and is, among other things "practising mind control on maniacs..." Co-editor Sue Stock and I rejected the letter.

Such is the nature of community publishing in a small village that at a late stage in pre-production a mutual friend implored us to run the letter as a personal favour. To run it in full we would have had to lose Sue's excellent photo of the Nimbin IWD Women's March (yeah right) so we decided to do our best to trim it to fit one column, and moved the Neighbourhood Centre piece to make room, as a favour.

I think we did a very good job in making the letter intelligible at all.

The major focus is clear: "this is of course the real war, the rape and plundering of the Earth," as is her proposed remedy: "revolution! on all fronts." Almost all of the idiosyncratic punctuation is there: "Earth", "Mother," "Sacred," "One," and "god," though I did capitalise "Christian" in all three occurrences, and decapitalised "Her" twice, for readability, without, I feel, losing the general thrust.

There was one typo that slipped through: "palatable" instead of "possible," and for that I do apologise. The continued success of the Nimbin GoodTimes, whose circulation has doubled in 12 months, is largely due to a conscious pursuit of quality. Anything sloppy or slap-dash, be it in letter-writing or proofing, just makes us look like the mainstream media's stereotype of a hopeless bunch of hippies. Still, to err is human...

I guess Ms Hoeben has never sent a letter to the mainstream press, like the Sydney Morning Herald, or she would have something to complain about.

Letters get edited, get used to it. But to somehow see our well-meaning endeavours, careful, time-consuming and voluntary - as not only censorship but a "slap in the face ... to all women and the Earth we live on" smacks of the same repressive bigotry that she clumsily sought to expose in the Promise Keepers.

Bob Dooley
Co-editor
Nimbin GoodTimes

Lismore a good sport

I must comment on how great it was to see the enthusiastic response from league supporters for the tickets for the NRL City v Country game in Lismore on May 6.

I happened to see the same event reported right from Grafton to the Tweed - with all roads leading to Lismore.

I believe the big match shows the way of the future for sport in Lismore.

The economic impact of sport is something our CBD and business people need to really harness - as every visitor represents a chance to support our economy.

I've been involved with the city's sporting clubs and associations for many years and the time is right for a new combined effort to make Lismore the sporting capital of the Northern Rivers.

Lismore may not have beaches, but our premium sporting fields and our sheer range of sporting groups give us many advantages.

This year Lismore has hosted the NRL pre-season match between Cronulla and Parramatta, the Australian Country Cricket Championships, the state u12 cricket carnival, the u14 Australian National Baseball Titles, and the Waratahs training camp.

If that's not enough, we have planned the Australian Rugby Shield on May 28 between the NSW Country Cockatoos and Perth, the Masters Games in September (which attracts more than 2000 competitors alone) and the Australian Marist Cricket Championships are scheduled for the coming summer, including a guest team from Johannesburg.

There are also other negotiations going on at present - including with new Australian League soccer clubs to host a match in June.

Add to this the regular season of competitions across all the sports and you begin to see just how valuable sport is to Lismore.

It truly is an exciting time for sport in Lismore, and I'm sure that we can all look forward to more scenes of queues of fans in our CBD eager to get tickets for the next big game.

John Chant
Deputy mayor
Lismore

Fight to save bowlo

As ANZAC Day draws near we remember all those who made the supreme sacrifice so those of us who follow in their footsteps can enjoy our free way of life, which includes our sporting heritage.

For the Ballina RSL Club Ltd to consider closing the RSL Bowling Club with the three greens commemorating the three armed services - namely Army, Navy and Air Force - is not in the true spirit of "ANZAC". Where is our fighting spirit? Surely the club management can discuss other strategies with the three bowling club committees - men's, women's and sandflies.

Other bowling clubs in the area have had trouble in the past, and with good management, have pulled themselves out of trouble. Surely we can do the same.

It will be a sad day to see the beautiful setting of our club become another unit ghetto.

The bowling fraternity and the citizens of Ballina deserve better.

Bruce Gallagher
RSL Bowling Club member
Ballina

Judgement day

I feel honour bound to support Lee Andresen's, to my mind, overly generous letter (Echo, April 14) regarding the passing of Pope John Paul ll. My only word of praise for this pontiff must be that he was certainly an improvement on most of those that preceded him as leader of this predominant Christian Church. A church that builds huge extravagant buildings clothes its acolytes in ostentatious robes and demands tithes from it's impoverished followers while 75 per cent of the world population starves hoodwinked by the doctrine that suffering will earn them a place in heaven. I too have spent many years in so called under developed countries and wholeheartedly support Lee's abhorrence of this inhuman man who professed to be a loving, caring church leader whose edict condemned thousands of uneducated, innocent, easily brainwashed people to the horror of HIV-AIDS and mothers all over the world to the heartbreak of abortion.

Indeed as Lee says, nobody is totally evil, but most of us accept our frailties and do not set ourselves up as mentors who speak the word of God. Here is hypocrisy indeed. I can only hope that the God in whose name he inflicted these inhumanities will judge him fairly, balance his good deeds against his evil ones and accord him the verdict he deserves.

Anne Patersen
North Codrington

Growing pains

It seems a shame that Nimbin can't be more united when planning gets underway for the MardiGrass. The costs and rules of organising such a weekend are becoming intolerable and people who care about cannabis law reform are few and far between in these days of distractions. But the reality now is that someone in Indonesia may be put to death because someone else wanted some pot. If the use of cannabis touches your family in any way at all (and it most likely does) then cannabis law reform is worth a serous looking at.

For some in Nimbin it's worth marching for, and they've made it such a grand event that in May each year after the harvest people from all over the world come to party in Nimbin. Unfortunately many Nimbin folk treat it as a cash cow to milk for the weekend. Fringe events charge entry and do not donate to the overall cost of infrastructure. It's seen as a good opportunity to set up stalls to raise funds for charity, to take advantage of the crowd, just like any seasonal event.

Most legitimate business houses in the main street deny they make any money from the weekend, some citing high wages bills and shoplifting. Stallholders from near and far baulk at paying fees just because it's the (illegitimate?) Nimbin MardiGrass and the hippie tradition of tolerance and compassion becomes something to exploit.

But the biggest profiteers of MardiGrass don't have to explain themselves at all.

They've got what the punters came for and they don't have to answer to anyone. It's the beauty of the black market, made necessary by the archaic cannabis laws, and in Nimbin, where we 'get up - stand up' - we're standing in it! The prohibition of cannabis has not only failed, it has spawned an industry where demand far outstrips supply (people do like cannabis) boosting up the price to that of gold. This humble herb with 10,000 years of history cannot now grow free in the bush for anyone to chance upon and has been pushed indoors under lights and value-added, and that's really thrown a spanner into the works.

I call on all the Nimbin people to unite and put some energy into keeping this festival ###relevant and make a donation or give a hand to those who each year voluntarily promote, organise, co-ordinate, accommodate, provide services and clean it all up afterwards: the Nimbin Hemp Embassy. To stand up and be counted. In other words, if you're going to ride on the back of this event, try to put something back into it so that it may "grow" until the laws are changed.

And have a happy MardiGrass!

Inez Price
Nimbin

What's the story?

This story is symptomatic for many communities.

The Lismore Council, which has administrative powers over Nimbin's Community Centre doesn't really know what they want.

If they want to save community spaces and activities, such as the Aquarius Market in Nimbin, they should not kill it by imposing unaffordable insurance premiums on the unpaid volunteers. Nor should it be of interest, whether, and how much, profit is made.

Most people here on this tiny market, held once a month, don't expect much profit from their stalls, nor does the Aquarius Market.

By the time the rental is paid for using our own space, musicians and other administrative costs, there is nothing left for insurance companies.

So, either the Lismore Council supports the efforts of "community-building", and pays for their desire to insure, or it effectively kills community efforts and violates its own stated intent of community nurture.

I am deliberately speculating here a little bit, to provoke some answers by the relevant people.

Maybe the National Party members Ian Causley and Thomas George, both residing in Lismore, have a different kind of community in mind. It must sound very suspicious to them, when market volunteer organisers state they are not aiming at profit, but rather want to re-invest back into the community with improving the public facilities on our own market grounds for everyone!

Well, what's the story here?

Martin Jansen
Nimbin

Hold the sprouts

I was amused to read Gerry Spatz's reference to brussel sprouts in his recent piece re cabbage (Echo, April 7, p. 34) given that I don't think I've yet met a brussel sprout that I liked. You're right Gerry, childhood memories of food are often very evocative. So many people I know for example recall the soft-boiled egg and toast soldiers from their childhood. It's the sort of comfort food we seek when we are adults. Similarly, certain foods are remembered with suitable sneer and awful taste memory. For me brussel sprouts have always been up there with the best of the worst. Serve me cabbage anytime Gerry, but hold that side order of brussel sprouts!

Susan Plunkett
Goonellabah

Lake open day

Great things have been happening at Lismore Lake during the past few weeks. Three islands have appeared. Young people from the Green Corps Team, supervised by EnviTE (which stands for Environmental Training and Employment), have planted up the islands with suitable vegetation, and some sculpturing has been carried out with dead tree stumps. Finally, and most important, water is being pumped in from the river. Already birds are coming back. Frogs are heard chorusing and turtles have been seen again. Just this last week, three different species of birds of prey have been circling and taking note of this new feature in their landscape.

We must thank our Mayor and the Council for giving approval to the project. I am sure they will not regret the decision, because a feature of this nature will be a real asset to Lismore. It will attract tourists, as well as bird life.

On Friday, April 29, there is to be a celebratory open day held at the lake, for the school children of the area in particular, but other visitors will be welcome. To find out times etc, phone Brian on 0427 072 316.

Keen birdwatchers often meet and go round the lake on Saturday mornings. To join in please phone 6625 2431 on Friday evening before 7pm.

Molly Crawford
Lismore

Shame on you

Wasn't it incredible the way the local MP for Page, Ian Causley, came out last week on behalf of his local families and ill and disabled constituents?

His attack on the Great Deceiver, John Howard, the untruthful lug who masquerades as Health Minister, Tony Abbott and Poisonous Pete, the Treasurer, for breaking "rock solid" and "ironclad" promises on health and welfare was long overdue.

You did not see it?

You are not alone. It did not happen. We are talking about a Federal Hayseed here. Spineless, inept, toady, and cowardly in the face of an attack on the most vulnerable of his constituents. With their electorates containing the highest proportions of aged and disabled pensioners in the country, Ian Causley, Lil' Luke Hartsuyker and all their sycophantic, fawning, leech like supporters should hang their heads in collective shame.

John X Berlin
Maclean

Adopt a pet

The annual Pet Adoptathon is being held over the weekend of April 30 and May 1, and promises to be a terrific event. This year, the Animal Rights & Rescue Group (ARRG) are utilising the animal nursery at Lismore Showground. The hours are from 10am to 4pm and entry both days is by donation.

Many of the dogs, puppies, cats and kittens in care will be there for viewing, with pet care advice available from volunteers. If you are thinking of bringing a pet into your family, we may have the perfect companion. (Please note, if you are renting, we will need to see written permission from the landlord or agent - this is to safeguard our animals.) This may also be a perfect opportunity to find out more about the group and our work, including the discount desexing scheme.

Contact ARRG on 6622 1881, or visit the website at www. animalrights.org.au.

Michela Brown
Alstonville