As far as I know no one else is covering this "slow-moving hurricane" like the reporters at the Militant. Please, keep up the excellent work. Indeed, I think these critical questions for the survival of working people may even warrant a pamphlet or small book. Keep up the demystifying.

Neil Callender
Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
 
Nationalize airline industry
I was puzzled by one omission in your December 16 editorial on the assault by the bosses and their government on the United Airlines workers. You counterpose to the bosses’ "solutions" a series of demands that address the needs of the United workers and the working class as a whole. But you do not mention taking United, and the entire industry, out of the hands of the capitalist owners.

With the entire airline industry in crisis, virtually every major airline bankrupt or on the verge of bankruptcy, and the bosses and their government savagely assaulting the wages and working conditions of the workers in this industry, wouldn’t this be an appropriate and ideal time to propagandize for the solution of "nationalization under workers’ control"? Is there some reason not to put forward this demand at this time?

Don Gurewitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts
 
 
Cuba’s AIDS programs
Two prominent ruling-class figures, Bill Gates of Microsoft and former president William Clinton, have recently written editorials in the New York Times on AIDS treatment programs in "developing" countries. Gates’s foundation is focused on doing work in India, while Clinton says "my foundation has begun signing agreements with developing nations, including Rwanda, Mozambique and the 15 states in the Caribbean Community."

Not surprisingly, neither Clinton or Gates makes any mention of the most successful program to combat AIDS in the world, that of the health system of revolutionary Cuba. Ana Morales Varela, a Cuban doctor who has taken part in internationalist medical missions in African countries like Guinea and Guinea-Bisseau, astonished audiences in the United States during a recent speaking tour here with Victor Dreke, a long-time cadre of the Cuban Revolution, with the facts about Cuba’s approach to AIDS and other medical questions. She noted that Fidel Castro’s speech, "History Will Absolve Me" in 1953, listed all the major questions of development that had to be addressed in Cuba and that, since the revolution’s triumph in 1959, Cuba’s leadership has led the Cuban people to tackling the majority of these questions--and yet they are not satisfied and continue to press ahead.

The fact that the rate of infection of HIV today stands at 0.01 percent in Cuba is another fact that will never be mentioned in the pages of the New York Times.

Seth Dellinger
New York, New York
 
 
Share paper with others
I’d like to take the time to say I really enjoy your paper. I try to share it with others in here so they can get a different view.

A prisoner
Rosharon, Texas

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.  
 
 
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