Views in brief
Words from a Pelican Bay hunger striker
IN RESPONSE to "Supporting Pelican Bay hunger strikers": This is one message getting passed around via e-mail and listservs from one of the prisoners at Pelican Bay. I thought it might be worthy of note:
It's been a difficult and uphill battle, a lot of brow-beating and direct debate, but as it stands, all are participating on a limited basis. Some, including myself, are going "indefinitely"...victory or death!
I ask that you and those necessary are aware of our participation. Geographically, we are isolated from the main [Security Housing Unit] facility and [Pelican Bay State Prison] will try to isolate and restrain our info from getting out....
Also, as you know, I'm sincerely sick with end-stage liver disease (ESLD) and a severe case of related diabetes. I'm going to end up in the hospital almost immediately and will be effectively isolated. Due to my dedication to the struggle, I will continue with my strike. I won't know when to stop. If the demands have been met in whole, negotiated part, etc., I will not take the cops' word, for the pigs have proven their word to be hollow. I will need the word of you or your outside support.
Likewise, please keep those convicts at the heart of this struggle in D short [corridor] abreast of my circumstances (most know me as "Ghost" or "Landale"). Hopefully, the situation doesn't deteriorate to this.
What that I end this letter with the words of Ulrike Meinhof [of Germany's Red Army Faction], 'Protest is when I say I don't like this or that. Resistance is when I see to it that things I don't like do not occur.'"
Chad Landrum #J-53747, Pelican Bay State Prison, A-2-114--MED/SHU P.O. Box 7500, Crescent City, CA 95531
B.S., Norman, Okla.
Obama's attack on Social Security
THE RECENT news that Obama is possibly selling the elders out has angered me--especially since I am one of them.
I cannot imagine taking a hit on my very small Social Security check--especially since I just took a hit a few days ago of $114.50 per month to pay for Medicare benefits. I frankly do not know how I am going to survive now.
Please address this issue for the many people who are affected by any changes to these programs. We are ready for a change in this country, and I am delighted to support the International Socialist Organization in making those changes.
If these programs are cut, what I see is that it will just increase the welfare rolls. When our earned benefits are cut, the choices are few in my opinion. Either welfare, or just up and die to save money for all. Please speak out for us.
Patricia Levasseur, from the Internet
Harvard's anti-Trotsky bias
IN RESPONSE to "The re-assassination of Trotsky": Great article! It's worth noting that Harvard has been attacking Trotsky since at least 1958, when the translation of his Diary in Exile by Harvard University Press included a scathing attack on Trotsky.
Erich Fromm, a pioneer of Marxist psychoanalysis and largely under-credited for his contributions to the Frankfurt School body of theories, responded to Harvard's cynicism:
The gratitude we owe to the Harvard Press for rescuing the picture of Trotsky for the present and for future generations does not, however, prevent me from expressing shock and dismay at the fact that the Harvard University Press advertised the book recently saying: "If (the diary) reveals the anguish and loneliness of his exile, often lays bare his underlying fanaticism and selfishness, and offers positive, historically important commentary on both local and international politics."...Quite aside from the fact that it is most unusual that a publisher would criticize his own author by derogatory remarks in his advertising copy, this procedure is unforgivable because there is nothing in the diary which "lays bare" Trotsky's selfishness. The only thing it lays bare is exactly the opposite.
I would challenge the copywriter of the Harvard Press advertisement to quote even a single sentence from the diary which would indicate Trotsky's "selfishness." He probably fell for the popularly shared misunderstanding of such persons as Marx and Trotsky. If a man who sees the essence of social and individual reality says what he sees, without sham and equivocation, he is taken to be egocentric, aggressive and vain. If he has unshakable convictions, he is called a fanatic, quite regardless of whether these convictions are acquired by intense experience and thought, or whether they are irrational ideas with a paranoid tinge. It is to be hoped that the statement will be omitted from further announcements.
Dean Sayers, Mechanicsville, Va.
ANSWER, McKinney and Qaddafi
IN RESPONSE to "A disservice to the antiwar movement": Thank you very much for this article. It was posted on the Answer Coalition's Facebook page with thousands of members.
I attended the Cynthia McKinney talk in Harlem a few weeks ago. I was appalled at how the representative from the Nation of Islam referred to "Brother Qaddafi" and how they all continued to speak of all his "good" deeds. I appreciate how your article outlines why their stance is so outrageous. So bravo, well done.
Maria Gregorio, New York City
A more nuanced picture of war and rape
IN RESPONSE to "War's first casualties": I think this is a fine column, but I object to Eamonn McCann's description of Joshua Phillips' fine book, None of Us Were Like This Before, as showing "how the requirements of war in Iraq and Afghanistan turned American boys into sex-depraved savages."
Did the soldiers in that book engage in ghastly prisoner torture and torture? Yes. Did this abuse involve sexual abuse? Sometimes, but very rarely in Mr. Phillips's book.
I would respectfully say that describing the soldiers as "sex-depraved savages" is a terribly unfair depiction, and seriously weakens McCann's argument. I've read None of Us Were Like This Before, and found it to be a far more nuanced and careful depiction of how the American military and George W. Bush underlings collectively engaged in torture.
I also question the assertion that Germaine Greer makes about rape. She states: "Rape is always present where you have slaughter...All soldiers, in certain circumstances, will rape, regardless of whether they're ours, or theirs, or whose." I'm not sure that's always the case. I don't believe that the Cambodian genocide was punctuated by much rape, and I can think of several other examples where that's also not the case.
I understand McCann's aim, and I greatly appreciate it. Yet I fear that overstating his facts undermines his argument.
Roger T., from the Internet
