Below we post a selection of recent letters to the World Socialist Web Site.
On “Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: Bush’s ‘big lie’ and the crisis of American imperialism”
Dear Editors,
Thank you for your inspirational work! It brings hope to the hearts of ordinary people.
During the war, my nine-year-old daughter watched President Bush on television talking about “freedom” and she said to me, “If this man wants people to have freedom why is he killing them?” Out of the mouths of babes the truth reveals itself.
When I tried to explain to my daughter that these people want to dominate everyone—the world—and they will do anything to achieve their aim, it is just about money and greed, my daughter asked, “How do we stop them?”
Without the WSWS web site and the valuable work you do, I would have no answer to this very important question. There is no greater or more powerful gift than awareness and you are giving this to the world—thank you.
MJ
Victoria, Australia
23 June 2003
* * *Perhaps the most revealing comments were made by Gen. Wesley Clark on “Meet the Press”(06/15/03) when he stated that the White House contacted him and others on 9/11 asking them as military commentators for the media to connect Iraq to the attack.
So, while Americans were dying and we were still counting our dead, the administration’s ideologues saw 9/11 as an opportunity to push the Iraq agenda.
The media knows this to be a major story yet has chosen to ignore it. The Washington Post had a short piece by Dan Balz on Clark but omitted the Iraq comments. They actually quoted the words leading to those comments, so the omission was clearly deliberate.
The practice of censorship by omission is becoming more and more obvious, but unfortunately only to those having the time or the will to search out the facts. The NY Times and the Washington Post have also both written what amounts to propaganda and lies. It has become a practice for the news services to add adjectives to anything related to Bush. Instead of just saying he “removed the hook and put the fish back,” they report he “gently removed the hook...,” no doubt compassionate conservatism in action. All of his spokesmen and cabinet members as well as the media and foreign officials seem to have been trained to use “vision” whenever possible. Bush has a vision for everything from tax cuts for the rich to solving the problems of the Middle East.
While the Democrats can be faulted for failing to act decisively, they also face the problem of not having a media audience. Many things they are doing go unreported. This is not to excuse their failure to act when they had the chance. They were the ones that could have investigated 9/11 and pinned the coward Bush to the wall. He ran like a rabbit on 9/11 and they let him get away with it. They are paying for it. A new made-for-TV movie will show Bush playing Harrison Ford playing President. Decisive, heroic, fighting those bastards who wouldn’t let him go home. Set to be released at the Republican Convention and on the anniversary of 9/11. As a nice touch and to thank the Democrats for letting him off the hook, they show him lecturing those (cowardly) Democrat leaders.
I get mailings from the Democratic National Committee. It isn’t that they aren’t doing things, it’s just that they are not doing the important things. The only issue is the world domination issue, and that’s being ignored. They are also not going to call Bush on his lies.
We can expect more lies about WMD and claims of their having been found. We will be lied into a war with Iran, or at least a justification for attacking and destroying their nuclear plants. The latter timed for the 2004 election.
We are watching the destruction of America. Even with all our faults, we once represented ideals and provided hope to many around the world. The image may not have been justified by our actions and the reality of those actions, but the dream was at least alive.
Now all is death and destruction. Soon there will be no dreamers.
RR
Florida
21 June 2003
* * *I liked your article on “Terrorism and the origins of Israel”. Lenni Brenner has also written a very enlightening piece about Zionism and Fascism. I believe Zionism is just a form of Jewish Nazism and people should be condemning it for all its atrocities to mankind. That the UN and the US chose to establish a Zionist state is one of the great tragedies of our times. They could have just as well established a Christian state in Africa headed by the Ku Klux Klan. Oh, that’s right, we basically had that with apartheid South Africa. Unfortunately, the apartheid South African blacks enjoyed more freedom than the Palestinians do under their Zionist masters. Of course, Israel’s killing unarmed women and children is just “fighting terrorism,” while any resistance groups fighting for their freedom and right to live as human beings are “terrorist groups.” I guess George Washington, Tom Jefferson, Ben Franklin and all the founding fathers who actively opposed unjust rule were really just rabble-rousing terrorists.
G
23 June 2004
* * *It really pains me to read about what’s going on in the Middle East; and it’s a reality that most Americans don’t want to realize; I mean, who wants to seriously acknowledge that we live in the most corrupt place on Earth, yet it’s a better place than elsewhere, right? We say these things, but the bull. I mean, bureaucracy is so thick; who knows where to start in terms of trying to change this country (which has the rest of the world by the nuts).
The story on terrorism and Israel only reaffirmed what I knew all along—one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist; but then again, the Arabs seem to think they can fight this kind of beast on the same terms; of course in the name of peace. I thank the people of the WSWS for at least having the guts to try to put things in some kind of perspective.
CD
23 June 2003
* * *Re: “US proconsul cancels municipal election in Iraq” and ”Terrorism and the origins of Israel,” once again, some of the most fascinating and well-written news around. Have tried my best to spread word of it to as many people as I can.
AA
23 June 2003
* * *On “50 years since the execution of the Rosenbergs”
Dear Bill and Peter,
Thanks for calling attention to the real story behind the Rosenberg case. If history classes in today’s schools even bother to teach their students about the 1950s and the McCarthyite hysteria, I doubt that they tell the full story. In my time at school (1950s/60s) we heard of the Rosenbergs, but we were taught that they were all of the things Judge Kaufman accused them of being. This along with civil defense drills (“duck and cover”) and a lot of other useless craziness. I don’t think I thought about them much until their sons’ book We Are Your Sons came out in the 1970s. Now, of course, with the information available from former agents of the Soviet Union, there is no longer any excuse for continuing to vilify the Rosenbergs.
Your article is also valuable for reminding us (or informing us for the first time) of the fact that the “secret of the atomic bomb” was not really a secret (not even to scientists in Germany, who during the war were conducting heavy water experiments in an endeavor to manufacture a nuclear weapon); that at the time of the alleged conspiracy, the Soviet Union was an ally of the United States; and that (most surprising to me) there were many people who believed at the time that information on the atomic bomb should be shared with the Soviets in order to avoid an arms race, which they foresaw and which did come to pass.
A particular fact that was news to me was that Klaus Fuchs was only sentenced to nine years imprisonment for his espionage! And he was a physicist and born in Germany! And Alan May actually passed on enriched uranium to the Soviets and served even less time.
But most important is your explanation of how the Stalinist bureaucracy encouraged CP parties to engage in spying, thereby making it easy for the United States to tar all communists with the brush of espionage, just in case portraying them as godless monsters from another planet wasn’t sufficient to get the hairs standing on the heads of the citizenry.
As an aside to this story, Ethel Rosenberg’s brother’s name was David Greenglass. I read an article recently about the sand at the site of the first explosion of an atomic bomb in New Mexico. The heat from the explosion turned the sand beneath into a green glass, named Trinitite (after Trinity site). This mineral can, by the way, be found for sale on the Internet.
CZ
San Francisco
19 June 2003
* * *Thank you for this very informative article. The New York Times’s much briefer editorial agrees that they were railroaded, but they pass over the incident too cursorily.
RB
19 June 2003
* * *Thank you for so incisively articulating what multitudes of us are feeling and from which we are so powerless to save and help ourselves.
May God bless you and your staff.
BL
21 June 2003
* * *On “US prepares military blockade against North Korea”
The article about US ventures in Southeast Asia and especially in North Korea was very informative. The US is now the self-proclaimed policeman of the world and is bent upon destroying the peace of the world. North Korea is a prime target, as the US wants to take revenge for the Korean War of the fifties. Its activities in the Middle East have exposed the people to hunger and poverty in once oil-rich Iraq. It is now time for socialists, humanists and liberals to join hands against the aggression of America and its imperial designs.
BH
20 June 2003
* * *Congratulations to Patrick Martin for his recent article “Software giant Oracle bids for right to destroy jobs”.
I worked as a software engineer for a mid-sized financial services company that got acquired by a major financial software company.
It took over a year for developers from both companies to become familiar with the software to be “consolidated.” Engineers pored over out-of-date design documents, attended knowledge transfer meetings, and struggled to decipher poorly documented programming code written by long-departed employees.
Meanwhile, management pushed for a quick release of the combined product. It didn’t matter that no design yet existed for such a product. The important thing was to get “something” out the door. The quality control departments were in an uproar over this, adding additional pressure for developers to turn something over to them.
Ultimately, the engineering teams split up to work on other projects, leaving some engineers to support and improve the software they originally developed.
CK
Reno, Nevada
24 June 2003
* * *On “California budget targets health care”
Editor,
Thank you for your excellent story, “California budget targets health care”. As a disabled citizen of California who is a Medi-Cal recipient, it is heartening to have a respected media source finally recognize the horrible atrocity we are being subjected to at the hands of Governor Gray Davis and his cold-blooded henchmen in the State Legislature.
Far too often, important issues confronting the disability community are ignored by the so-called “mainstream” media despite our pleas for their help in trying to expose the injustice and mistreatment we are constantly being confronted with.
It is reassuring to me, and others like me, to receive some attention and validation from you good people at the World Socialist Web Site.
Warm thanks!
BB
ADAPT
24 June 2003