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Letters from our readers

On “Nearly one million US workers cut off unemployment benefits

 

 

Sorry but those Senators who oppose extending unemployment benefits (for those of us who are desperately trying to find work or we will lose everything), should resign from office. Shame on you for taking this all out on the individual taxpayer and the voters who elected you. When are you going to bring witnesses to Capitol Hill to testify how hard it is to get a job? Huh?

S
18 June 2010

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Why do they care? They have jobs, that unfortunately we as voters placed them in. The economy is only improving for them and those that have money. The real Americans (the ones that actually care) are the ones that can’t feed their children or pay their mortgages.

The government should be utterly ashamed of themselves. Guess we amount to no more than New Orleans did after Katrina or the people of the Gulf Coast, now, after the oil spill…doesn’t affect them so why should they care…maybe if we booted ALL of them from office, they could experience the not knowing where there next meal is coming from or if they are going to have a roof over their heads in the coming months.

At this point in time, I am not proud to be an American.

Sheryl S
18 June 2010

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I think the banks should be fined $10 million a day, until unemployment drops to 5 percent. That will force them to lend to small businesses.

Also there should be a list of addresses, both office and home, of the members of Congress that voted it down. So that all the unemployed and soon homeless can move onto their yards and camp out there.

John T
18 June 2010

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This is heartless and cruel. I am one of those who has been unemployed for more than a year. Believe me, I am not having a garden party on my unemployment benefits. They amount to less than half of what I earned when I was working.

I would also like to remind people like Lieberman that there are NO JOBS out here because of the fiscal crisis caused by those very same people who paid his way into office. The criminals in the banks and on Wall Street received a bailout at taxpayers’ expense, but we working people are depicted as lazy dependents partying on $450 a week!

Come on, Mr. Lieberman. I challenge YOU to live on $450 a week. I would venture to guess that you have been encouraged to remain in Congress instead of working for a living because of the inflated salary and cushy perks you receive for sitting on your fat behind and pontificating about the working class eating lotus on unemployment benefit!

Thousands of jobs that have been destroyed in the current crisis of capitalism are never coming back, and people like Joseph Lieberman, Landrieu and Linder are balking at minor increases in taxes on the rich while excoriating the true victims of a system that is inhumane and out of control. This is not new, but it is no less revolting.

Carolyn
California, USA
18 June 2010

On “An execution by firing squad in Utah

Thank you to Kate Randall for your moving article about Mr. Gardner’s needless, tragic execution. I am moved to tears to read about this miscarriage of justice. And I am violently opposed to the death penalty. This case is but one of many criminal state murders. Thank you for your thorough, honest and sensitive reporting of this event and this topic.

Allison K
California, USA
19 June 2010

On “More strikes erupt in China’s auto industry

 

In a matter of just a few years these factories will be located in India. In order to keep profits in the stratosphere new forms of cheap and unorganized labor must be found.

PK
21 June 2010

On “Public Meetings: The Gulf oil crisis and the profit system

The announcement today of yet another coal-mining disaster in China in which 47 miners have died adds to the appalling toll in human life that has characterised the history of this industry in fuelling the growth of national economies since the rise of capitalism. The oil industry as a key component of the profit system now not only destroys human life directly through its criminal neglect of operational safety, but also threatens severe damage to the delicate balance between man and nature through disasters such as the spillage of oil into the Gulf of Mexico and the relentless encouragement of fossil fuel consumption.

Add to this record of exploitation the integral part the global energy corporations, based in their competing imperialist national “homelands”, have played in fomenting wars to secure energy resources, leading to the death and impoverishment of millions in the oppressed nations, the immiseration of the workers in the oppressor nations, and the sacrifice of thousands of soldiers’ lives, and the case for the socialist transformation of the energy industry and economic life in general could not be more urgent.

In Britain, the former coal-mining communities have been devastated since the defeat of the miners’ strike of 1984-85 and the wholesale closure of pits and allied industries. The sons and daughters of former coal miners now have few prospects other than signing up in the army, casual jobs or the “black economy”. Meanwhile, the Labourites such as Ed Balls resort to anti-immigrant rhetoric in a desperate attempt to deflect the growing disenchantment with the national reformist parties.

May I suggest that the SEP organise meetings in the former mining areas along the lines of those announced in parts of the US to address these issues and their interconnectedness and to articulate the party’s internationalist perspective and programme.

(I hesitate to suggest the National Coal-mining Museum for England at the former Caphouse Colliery, a stone’s throw from here, as a possible venue. It lacks even the most elementary attempt to explain the history of mining in Britain, let alone the rest of the world, in relation to the crisis of capitalism!)

 

John G
UK
21 June 2010

On “US and EU impose extra sanctions on Iran

 

Like the endless sanctions previously against USSR and China, and the many present ones against today’s “axis of evil,” these additional embargoes will help to teach self-sufficiency to the victim country.

 

We have known this with absolute certainty since Napoleon’s Continental System required Europe to create sugar from beets, dyes from sulphur, coffee from chicory and grow its own tobacco, all in replacement of the colonial goods the British controlled.

 

If sanctions strengthen the victim instead of weakening him, why are we doing it?

 

Their main attraction in a commercial world such as the one we have created in North America and Europe is that they put prices up temporarily. Iran will pay more for its refining equipment, and whatever else is on the list, than everyone else. Those traders willing to take a gamble (that’s all of them) will open offices in Dubai and the Iranian neighbourhood and grow fat.

 

But it is very likely the second attraction that is motivating Western policy-makers right now. If the victim can be provoked into a response it might be adequate to start a war with the West appearing to take a responsive posture.

 

We do this all the time.

 

The first example I am familiar with was stimulating the French Republican Government into declaring war on Britain when they discovered we were paying French generals to turn their armies round and march on Paris. That was over 200 years ago so we have had plenty of time to perfect the ruse—ho ho. The article mentions the means used to start WWII with Japan and make it look like they were the aggressors.

 

Why should the West want to war with Iran? Because that country is the local power centre for Central Asia. Occupy Iran, replace its government, and all the mineral wealth of the Stans becomes available to us just when we are running out of our own supplies in North and South America.

 

Having a global war is also a means of recapitalising our moneymen too. In unpredictable conditions, a group with its wits about it, a group that willingly co-operates such as our capitalists, are best placed to do well.

 

It’s a bit risky because wars are difficult to stop and we always spend too much on them but, on the other hand, they remove all the anger from the people and make them docile and manageable afterwards so eventually profit gratification can be confidently expected.

 

Roger H
Hong Kong
19 June 2010

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