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Letters from our readers

On “Egyptian military storm peaceful protest in Tahrir Square

 

 

Arab Spring displays its resiliency amid state mandated climate change!

 

Heinz S
12 April 2011

On “Australia: Qantas gears up for major assault on airline workers

 

When will middle management learn that they are being used? They are workers too, and as such should be unionized. There is nothing in it for them.

 

John S
11 April 2011

On “Japan’s nuclear cover-up

 

In your recent Perspectives article Peter Symonds writes:

 

“It is not nuclear technology as such that presents the danger, but the social and economic order under which it has developed.”

 

This is partially true. The profit-driven social and economic order under which nuclear power plants are conceived and developed is deranged to the extent that it would even consider nuclear fission generated electricity as a project worth pursuing.

 

At its base, we are talking about nuclear fission used to boil water to produce steam to drive turbines to generate electricity. The fundamental illogic and inverted energy transformations of the process evidences the inherent irrationality of such an approach.

 

Every step of the technology is inherently strewn with misery and unacceptable environmental risk, from the mining of the ore which massively pollutes the land and water (in the US the historical impact of which has fallen disproportionately on Native American communities) to its highly resource/energy-intensive implementation and maintenance (a snake eating its own tail) to the impossibility of full recovery and cleanup when “accidents” (inevitably) occur.

 

“Internal radiation” entering biological organisms through vectors of inhalation and ingestion, consisting of radionuclides such as iodine-131 and caesium-137, propagate up the food chain and cause cancers in humans and other mammals.

 

And none of it is necessary. With a serious investment in alternatives (including well-researched but suppressed “over-unity” energy generating devices) the nuclear fission approach to energy generation can be relegated to the dustbin of really bad ideas.

 

Of course, nuclear weapon propagation—the big brother to the nuclear power industry—needs to be stopped and rolled back also.

 

Under the current state of the global capitalist death agony such an investment is inconceivable since it would pose a direct threat to the multitrillion-dollar profit interests of the giant energy cartels who push nuclear energy (and who have government guaranteed partial indemnification from financial jeopardy).

 

Comradely,

 

SZ
New Mexico, USA
12 April 2011

On “Supreme Court rules against New Orleans’ frame-up victim, upholds religious school credits

 

I would like to address the John Thompson case—as the tip of an iceberg.

 

It is now beyond question that all working people are staring a burgeoning world police state in the face. And the US is no exception. The Thompson case is horrifying, but is only the latest in a series of prosecutions, convictions, imprisonment, and executions of the poor (or young, or nonwhite, or otherwise unacceptable) for sport by our criminal court system—and I use the term in the fullest, richest sense.

 

Along with all the other outrages being perpetrated by the bourgeoisie and their lapdogs, it is clear that the working class can expect no justice or mercy from the law enforcement misauthorities for the crime of their very existence. Equal justice for all? What meretricious nonsense!

 

As Marxists know perfectly well, these outrages are nothing more than excrescences of the capitalist system, and they will not be eliminated until the filthy system itself is swept off the face of the earth.

 

However, we are not without tools in the meantime. I, for one, am looking forward with relish to the time when the working class sets up a system of peoples’ tribunals to bring the true criminals to justice, and simultaneously exculpates their many innocent victims.

 

With the swelling ranks of the outraged around the world, tribunals of this sort have enormous potential for countering the criminal fun of the ruling class, point by point, victim by victim, and place by place. Sentences, once passed by the tribunals, though they be unaccompanied by actual enforcement power under the bourgeois state, will be very difficult for the “perps” to deal with, as they will expose their criminal activities before the working class globally. They will be deprived of all their powers of denial, and will find their “authority” bleached white in the strong sunshine of working-class justice.

 

CH
Houston, Texas, USA
11 April 2011

 

On “Letters from our readers

 

In response to the letter by Diane, who wonders why fiction writers include such violence and brutality in their writing, I have just one question to ask:

 

Diane, have you read the excellent article in the April 14th, issue 1128 (page 66) Rolling Stone by Mark Boal, “The Kill Team”? It is a true story of what a group of US soldiers were doing in Afghanistan, right under the noses of their commanding officers. The article is supported with photos of their depravity. Any author would have to have a great imagination to write fictional scenes more violent than what these US soldiers were doing daily seemingly with a yawn. Perhaps that is why writers of fiction go over the top, because it is hard to outdo the depravity which results from everyday US foreign policy.

 

Raymond C
Canada
12 April 2011

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