The Militant(logo) 
    Vol.59/No.42           November 13, 1995 
 
 
Letters  

Chauvinism
This letter is in regard to Martín Koppel's answer to Ed Meredith's letter. ["No common ground with rightist groups" in the September 25 Militant.]

We do absolutely need to take a stand against nationalism and chauvinism. Socialists also need to guard against condemning concrete positions because they have been put in a faulty abstract context.

Human beings have the right to bear arms to protect themselves. This right may also be necessary at a future time when workers are implementing a socialist democracy and face capitalist-state repression. Humans also have the right to decide what they want to do with their own bodies - as in the questions of abortion and the right to suicide.

I was glad to see you used Mussolini as an example of a "socialist" who became a fascist. Angelica Balabanoff, who worked with Lenin in Russia, gave a fine portrait of him in her book, My Life as a Rebel. She states he was one of the most cowardly men she had ever known, illustrated by the fact his "war wound" was in the posterior area!

Charles Bateman

West Sacramento, California

Immigrants
I was disappointed with the "In Brief" news item "New Jersey prison guards brutally beat immigrants" in the October 30 Militant. The article left out details which I believe highlight the importance on reporting this abuse.

According to news reports in Miami, (the Miami Herald by the way reported this as a case of "torture") the immigrants were forced to shout "America is Number One" as they ran through the gauntlet. In addition, in one case the prison guards used pliers to pull out the pubic hair of one of the immigrants.

While conduct this extreme is not yet the rule, abuse of immigrant workers by the Immigration and Naturalization Service and prison authorities is widespread. I think the article deserved more facts and greater prominence in the Militant.

Seth Galinsky

Miami, Florida

Editors' note: We agree with the above comments and should have given more details and the space that the issue required.

Myths about Australia
For months the various 50th anniversaries of the end of aspects of the Second World War have provided the Australian government and big-business media with opportunities to bombard working people with patriotic flag- waving. Central to the view that working people in Australia had a stake in siding with their own rulers during the second world interimperialist slaughter is the myth that the Japanese government planned to invade Australia.

I read Patti Iiyama's review of two recent books on Hiroshima (Militant, October 9, 1995) this way when she noted, "By the spring of 1942...[Japanese] troops were at the threshold of invading Australia."

Neither the Japanese government nor its military High Command ever backed or approved any plan to invade Australia, despite individual commanders in Southeast Asia and the South Pacific, such as General Yamashita, contemplating or favoring invasion.

The bombing of northern towns like Darwin, Broome, and Townsville was designed to prevent raids on Japanese occupied territory - especially oil-rich Sumatra in what was then the Dutch East Indies - and to disrupt preparations for a U.S.-led counteroffensive. By mid-1942 thousands of U.S. troops were disembarking every week at ports around Australia.

Japanese moves to occupy what is today Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands weren't preliminary to an invasion of Australia either.

Tokyo's actions served a strategic goal: above all, to protect its only source of oil - taken in response to Roosevelt's 1940 oil embargo - as it strove to maintain its domination over China, Korea, and other colonial countries and compete with its imperialist rivals using military means.

Doug Cooper

Sydney, Australia

Cuba rally in Denver
On October 20, 65 people attended a rally at the U.S. federal building in Denver, Colorado, demanding an end to the U.S. economic embargo against Cuba. The rally was called by the October Cuba Coalition, which also demanded the end on travel restrictions and the right of Cuba as a sovereign nation to determine its own destiny.

The participants included Pastors for Peace, Venceremos Brigade, The Freedom to Travel Campaign, and Women's International League for Peace and Freedom. A 15-year-old high school student who attended the "Cuba Vive Festival" in August was among the participants. A student at Colorado University at Boulder who was a participant on the Venceremos Brigade in August, spoke on the need to defend Cuba because of the provisions for health care, education, and housing granted to all Cuba's citizens.

MEChA, the Chicano student organization at one of the Denver area high schools, provided marshals for the rally. Several Latino workers, who were janitors in the federal building, came out to listen to the speeches.

John Langford

Salt Lake City, Utah

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of general interest to our readers.

Please keep your letters brief. Where necessary they will be abridged. Please indicate if you prefer that your initials be used rather than your full name.

 
 
 
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