To the editor:
Vietnam must not be forgotten.
Your essay supporting the New School students who are calling for [Robert] Kerrey's ouster was excellent. I didn't realize that Gore wanted more money for the Pentagon than Bush.
SM
14 May 2001
To the editor:
After reading your article, “Robert Kerrey and the bloody legacy of Vietnam,” I feel like shouting a hearty “God bless you!” God bless you people at the World Socialist Web Site for your fearlessly persistent truth-telling about this barbarian, terrorist nation we live in.
I find your reasoning to be clear and flawless. The subject of American state terrorism must be kept before the public eye for as long as it continues, and for as long as any of these cowardly, inhuman war criminals are walking around loose. It is quite right to hunt down the Nazis as long as there are any left on Earth, and neither should there be any statute of limitations on Ku Klux Klan atrocities. And if that much is admitted to by the majority of Americans then it is the most vile and despicable hypocrisy for the same people to want to sweep under the rug our bloodthirsty, racist genocide of over 3 million Vietnamese men, women and children.
I'm relieved that there are people at the WSWS who are calling things by their right names. That is absolutely essential. As you've pointed out in many of your articles, the revolution against the capitalist plutocracy is largely a war of words and ideas at this point. And the battle to awaken people's minds is the necessary foundation for the physical battles that will be fought in the future. Such a foundation can never be laid, however, if even socialists fail to fully and unflinchingly call things what they truly are. There's no hope if, like most capitalist liberals, we too are seduced into the habit of using the war criminals' own deceptive terminology. We'll never win this war of ideas if we are so weak as to call America's cruel and inhuman TERROR campaigns by such absurd euphemisms as “military adventurism” or the blandly misleading “bombing campaign” or even dignifying these cowardly, evil atrocities by the term “war.”
“Tyrannosaurus Capitalismus” will go the way of its reptilian predecessors, sooner or later. It's just a matter of time. And scientific socialists will certainly help to speed the evolutionary process. There's a nice, BIG asteroid out there with the words Truth, Reason and Humanity written all over it—and all the “Star Wars” satellites and genocidal terror campaigns in the world are never going to stop it.
Civil disobedience and tax resistance are two of the most essential strategies. And in fighting the war of ideas it's important to remember that simple images are far more powerful than sterile, intellectual words. The objective is to awaken the media-brainwashed working class masses. Images speak directly to our subconscious minds. It is the media-programmed subconscious mind that poisons people into apathetic paralysis. By contrast, a morally stimulated subconscious mind charges people into taking compassionate action. Only compassionate mass-action will ultimately bring on the extinction of capitalist dinosaurs, which have the insidious weapons of corporate-funded, CIA-designed “news,” TV programs and movies. Such weapons are more powerful than bombs and bullets. They are absolutely essential brainwashing weapons that allow capitalist war criminals to neutralize their opposition and cover up their mass-murdering terror campaigns in the midst of this Disinformation Age.
DT
14 May 2001
To the editor:
We the PEOPLE in all of our major cities across this nation have no affordable housing. We literally have the homeless lining our streets and major corridors. Many of the homeless have been economically displaced, through no fault of their own.
On Tuesday, May 8, 2001, Richard Bobb from the Los Angeles City Attorney's Office and who heads the Slum Landlord Task Force was interviewed on the local NBC Channel 4 news program regarding the housing crisis and slum landlords. Mr. Bobb admitted, as has been documented in newspaper reports by other governmental agencies, i.e. Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG), that in Los Angeles, as in other major cities, there is a major HOUSING CRISIS. Mr. Bobb opined when asked about slum landlords and substandard housing units that many people are forced to live in if they are not actually out on the street, that an unsophisticated party may ask: “Why doesn't a tenant move?” The answer: “There is no place to go. There is no affordable housing.”
Therefore many greedy landlords do not do repairs, unless forced to.
Why are we the PEOPLE and our elected officials even entertaining a tax cut that primarily benefits a small percentage of the wealthy, while basic needs, i.e. affordable housing, are being ignored.
AV
9 May 2001