Workers World News Service: Letters

------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the June 1, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper -------------------------

Letters

Mumia and censorship

Fred Goldstein's article in WW (May 11, 2000) entitled "Why They Censor the 'Voice of the Voiceless'" was great. You're correct: Most of the major networks censored Mumia's address at the Antioch graduation, including many of those that had shown (often hostile) interest in it in the four weeks preceding the event. Strange ...

I know because I did over 50 interviews in three weeks with all the major networks as the chief student coordinator and spokesperson for that event. The coverage, although often reactionary, was nevertheless all over the country. So what happened when the big day came? A whiteout.

It's as if there was a collective decision in the capitalist media that this was getting too big, too organized, and that it should be ignored, suppressed, censored. So you hit it on the money. I too take it as one of the signs that the movement is growing again.

Teishan Latner
Antioch class of 2000
Antioch, Ohio

WW for prisoners

I have just finished reading the latest issue of Workers World and as always I will pass it on to other prisoners and engage them in conversation as to the content of your paper, as opposed to that of the corporate owned and controlled media.

I would like to thank you all for keeping me on your mailing list, and extend a warm and strong May Day abrazo to each and every one of you.

Tom Manning
For the December 16th Committee
Springfield, Mo.

Los Alamos fire

Our federal officials--Pete Domenici, Heather Wilson, Bill Richardson, Jeff Bingaman and Tom Udall--who have for years thrown billions of our tax dollars into the nuclear war labs like Los Alamos, are now desperately trying to scapegoat low-level park service officials and powerless environmentalists for the fire in Los Alamos which has done so much human and political damage.

These politicians are desperate to reopen Los Alamos in a weakened condition because the fire which was unleashed by rambunctious climatic changes has exposed the fact that there is no intellectual rationale for the continued existence of the nuclear labs nor the risks associated with them any longer.

The world is getting hotter and the weather as a result is unpredictable--new lakes in the Australian desert, long dry hot nights in our desert when it should be cool, winds of extreme strength. We have had global conferences and most agree on this.

New Mexico's nuclear club of politicians want us to think more cows and logging in the forests would have prevented this. They even repeated Ronald Reagan's ridiculous claim that trees are the greatest polluters of radiation. They treat the public as if we were ignorant and only they know the facts. In reality, it is political leadership at the top who is to blame for this crisis, not the rangers out in the forests working with reduced budgets and manpower.

Like at Chernobyl the federal officials have tried to downplay the seriousness of the radiation releases generated by the fire. The governor and the lab officials rushed to tell us everything was normal even as the fire raged out of control and as tests showed levels of radiation at 10 times the norm. Significantly, they did no real-time isotopic analysis of the cloud plume, even though they do this routinely over China and Russia all the time with sniffer planes. They gave no warnings to pregnant women to evacuate, like at Chernobyl, which should have been a minimum human care action.

The billions that will be wasted on rebuilding the lab could have gone a long way to providing quality education and health care to all New Mexicans. What a loss.

Our federal officials have sacrificed untold numbers of people to future health risks just so they could avoid a possible evacuation of northern New Mexico's cities and rural areas, which would reveal how serious was the situation. It was Los Alamos which injected plutonium into live humans to see how people would die. None of our Congressional delegation has taken action against the Nazis who ran these experiments, and now they endanger the public at large by keeping the nuclear labs open.

Robert Anderson
New Mexico

Accurate info on Cuba

Just want to say...

Thanks for the great website with updated and accurate information about Cuba. As you already know, one must be very diligent in the search for information regarding Cuba. Even if one has an opposing view about life and politics on the island, it's a rarity to hear intellectually comparative discussion about Cuba or it's history. I find this unfortunate since the information is out there for all to see. However, pockets of the society (although decreasing) are much too comfortable adopting that which is too frequently reported from Little Havana.

Keep up the good work!!!

Andrea Steward
Via the Internet

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