There is a map of the world at night, taken over several months, showing the electric lights from the surface of the planet. This map shows at a glance which countries have access to electric power and which do not. One of the captions tells that Italy, an imperialist power with a population of 60 million, glows brighter than India with a population 17 times greater (over 1 billion).

Jim Wright
Cleveland, Ohio  
 
Iraq war
I read last week’s Militant and I found it as interesting as ever. I have only two questions regarding the imperialists’ war against Iraq. The first question is what did you mean when you said (editorial “Bring the troops home now!” in November 30 issue) “The 2003 assault was Rumsfeld’s war, but was followed by Powell’s occupation”? What exactly was Powell’s tactic? What was his course? In what did it differ from Rumsfeld? Isn’t Powell another advocate of the war party? What makes Rice more reliable?

The second question is: Why does the Militant say that the fighters in Iraq are Baathist? Are they the only fighters? What about the suicide attacks? Are they Baathist as well? Is Abu Musab al-Zarqawi associated to the Baathists?

Thank you very much for your time and keep up the good work providing the only serious working-class explanation to world politics today.

Carlos Pizarro
by e-mail  
 
Has ‘Islamism’ peaked?
I would like to understand better a political point featured in the November 16 issue of the Militant. The article reporting on the October 31 talk by Socialist Workers Party National Secretary Jack Barnes states that Islamism “has peaked,” and refers to the “exhaustion of ‘Islamist’ groups like Hamas or al-Qaeda.” You report Barnes explained that a 1979 action by such forces, which was crushed by the Saudi regime, “was the high point of ‘Islamism’ while September 11 was its flare-out.”

I hope you will write more on this subject. To the best of my knowledge Hamas, for instance, did not even exist (at least in its present form) in 1979 but appears to have won broad support since then, arguably perhaps for reasons other than “Islamist” ideology. In any event, a follow-up article of some kind would be welcome.

Geoff Mirelowitz
Seattle, Washington  
 
After U.S. elections
It is difficult to determine what the next step is for a citizen concerned with the well-being of American workers, especially after such a strenuous election.

The answer is simple: We must continue to fight for the rights of workers to organize, and against the capitalist system that is pursuing economic imperialism as its fundamental foreign policy.

For the past four years, the Democrats have complained that the previous election was “stolen” from them. Now what will they say? The labor unions mobilized and put a majority of their resources behind the effort to elect a representative who promised a better country. What will the unions fight for now?

If those same resources would have gone toward building a movement that was in the best interests of the working people in America, then we would be fighting—instead of appearing to be “defeated” when John Kerry lost.

Instead of focusing on what may or may not happen four years from now, we should focus on what we can do for ourselves as workers during the next four years. We must fight for what we want instead of fighting for something that is a little bit better than what we currently have. There are still millions of Americans who just participated in activism for the first time. We must mobilize these people and concentrate on the interests of the working people and think of the next step.

The issues that working Americans face right now are too critical to be ignored and must be acted on immediately.

Scott Holliday Wilson
Washington, D.C.

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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