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Vol. 72/No. 32      August 18, 2008

 
Letters
 
Midwest floods
I thought the article on the Midwest floods (“Poorly built levees in Midwest magnified damage by floods” in the July 7, 2008, Militant) politically disorienting by attributing the floods to the “landscape radically reengineered by humans.”

This catastrophe is another example of how capitalism unalterably advances the forces of production (transportation and agricultural in this case) without regard for the consequences to workers and farmers or the environment. It’s not the canalification of the Mississippi or raising the productivity of agricultural land that’s the problem, it’s capitalism’s disregard for these consequences to land and labor.

Karl Butts
Plant City, Florida
 
 
Racism in WWII
On July 26 a commemoration was held at the site of the former Fort Lawton, an army base in Seattle. At the ceremony the court martial and convictions of 28 Black soldiers, which occurred in November of 1944, were overturned. The soldiers had been charged with rioting and complicity in the lynching of an Italian prisoner of war on the base.

The army was forced to review the case after Jack Hamann, a journalist, investigated the case and wrote a book on it called On American Soil. Only two of the Fort Lawton 28 were still alive at the time of the ceremony and the one, Samuel Snow, who had been flown in for the occasion was hospitalized in Seattle and died the next day.

Edwin Fruit
Seattle, Washington

FARC in Colombia
Many thanks for the good work, such as the article “Fidel Castro speaks out on Colombia hostages, lessons of the Cuban Revolution” (July 28, 2008, Militant). Fidel’s’ articles contain many lessons about the bloody role of imperialism and of the murderous state-sponsored paramilitary hordes that terrorise the Colombian countryside, the revolutionary methods of the Cuban leadership, and the different calibre of the Cuban leadership and the leaderships of groups such as FARC [Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia].

For accuracy’s sake could you please check the following sentence: “In 1993 the FARC split from the Communist Party and Marulanda took over the leadership of the guerrilla group.” In fact, Marulanda was always the main leader of the guerrilla group. The 1993 split marked the moment when the FARC decided to organize its own political party. However, it is true that the Communist Party did take over politically the course of what was a legitimate peasants movement. The split didn’t change the political character of FARC.

Yonatan Mosquera
London, United Kingdom

The letters column is an open forum for all viewpoints on subjects of interest to working people. 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.

‘Militant’ Prisoners’ Fund
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