DOWN AND OUT DOWN UNDER

"Health standards among Australia's Aborigines are as poor as those among the white population before the advent of penicillin nearly a century ago, according to the World Health Organisation (WHO). A WHO report found that Aborigines still suffered from leprosy, tuberculosis and rheumatic heart disease, all of which were eradicated decades ago in other developed nations. In some parts of New South Wales the average life expectancy for Aboriginal men was 33." (Independent, 2 May) Whenever capitalism invades the territory of indigenous people living in a pre-capitalist society the consequences are disastrous. The plains Indians of USA, the forest-dwellers of the Amazon and the Australian aborigines all of them slaughtered and impoverished by the advance of capitalism. RD