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Letters from our readers

On “The Gulf oil spill: Part 3—The social impact

 

 

Outstanding video report! I have come to expect the highest quality of on-site video reporting from the WSWS, for coverage just like this. The superbly professional treatment of the subject matter makes an irrefutable argument for public control of the main levers of industry. Watching this, I really felt like a prisoner in BP’s militarized zone formerly known as the Gulf Coast. I enjoyed the locals’ artistic depictions; very powerful!

 

Ed H
1 July 2010

On “The New York Times and pacemaker ‘overtreatment’

 

This article splendidly elucidates some of the suspicions I had when I read the Times. My wife kept saying, “But pacemakers do so much good.” She refused to read the article. Thanks so much for your clarity and good will in a world where narrow personal agendas are rampant and ever so hurtful.

 

Edward P
New York, USA
30 June 2010

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I developed Type II diabetes after taking statins for 9 years. Since stopping taking them and also stopping taking my other meds, I have maintained a healthy cholesterol and glucose level for the past year and a half. I eat health food and practice Pilates regularly, as well as walking and climbing stairs every day.

 

That said, the idea that the insertion of stents can be replaced with the prescription of statins is idiotic. Once the damage has been done to the lining of blood vessels with plaque, statins can do nothing to alleviate the condition. Clearly, the self-appointed arbiters of what is “overly generous” believe that anything that saves a life is too generous and that the failure to save a life is “just one of those things” that occurs in “the real world” of pragmatism and cold accounting.

 

Yes, yes. We have gotten the message. The capitalist class has decided that it cannot afford the rest of us. What a shame that this turns reality on its head. It is we—and the planet, and future generations—who cannot afford the capitalist class.

 

Carolyn
California, USA

 

On “US Congress withholds billions from Medicaid, jobless benefits

Congress, composed as it is of millionaires and the merely extremely wealthy, has absolutely no idea how much a couple hundred dollars means to ordinary Americans. Our so-called “leaders” in both corporate parties play games while citizens confront possible hunger and homelessness. Many revolutionaries are people who have nothing to lose and every day our thoroughly corrupted system forces more citizens into that category.

 

CG
Ohio, USA
1 July 2010

On “China: Strike erupts in Japanese-owned electronics plant

 

An excellent piece. I enjoyed the explicit way the article connects the events that are playing out right now in China to Marx’s analysis of the industrial reserve army.

 

It does seem that the entire world has become a Marxist classroom. I have been telling my friends that the world’s bourgeois economists must be surreptitiously reading Marx late at night under the covers, with a flashlight—sensing somehow that the old boy might have been on to something.

 

Now, however, it seems that the secret is out! Too many odd little glowing spots shining through the sheets have caused the economists to stick their heads out and frankly say that Marx was right—although always with the aim in mind of advising capitalism how it can avoid Marx’s trap!

 

CH
Texas, USA

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