One suggestion for an upcoming story, perhaps one which is simply awaiting a willing contributor, is the 20-day strike of steelworkers at a BHP plant in Hastings, Victoria, over worker security and entitlements. Last night injuries occurred amongst pickets as police broke lines at 1:00 a.m. BHP has reportedly begun court proceedings against a dozen or so employees involved in the picket.

The mainstream press in Australia has been largely silent about the proceedings at Hastings and socialists lack a newspaper of the caliber of the Militant which covers union, workers’, and farmers’ issues in depth. As someone concerned about the dangerous lack of workers’ consciousness in a country led by a racist, conservative government which preys upon the divisions and insecurities of this country’s workers, farmers, and petty-bourgeois, coverage and detailed analysis of events such as these is crucial.

Damian Doyle
Silverwater, Australia
 
 
India, Kashmir, Pakistan
Thank you for your coverage on the India-Pakistan situation. Once again the Militant has proved its irreplaceable worth in helping me to see a complex crisis from the perspective of the international working class.

I have a remaining disagreement with your analysis.

Your articles have contained no discussion about the pernicious Hindu chauvinism which the Indian bourgeoisie is increasingly wielding in an attempt to divide and rule over a billion urban and rural poor for whom capitalism offers nothing but deepening misery and oppression. The rise of the far-right BJP to power, and the connivance of this party and the Indian state in the recent massacres of thousands of Muslims in Gujarat province, demonstrate that the threat to the secular basis of the Indian state and to the struggle for unification of the Indian subcontinent doesn’t come only from the Pakistani dictatorship and its imperialist allies.

So, I want to see your analysis completed! Kashmiris whom I have spoken to here in Sheffield, some of whom have been friendly to the communist movement and all of whom are firm opponents of the imperialist war on Afghanistan and defenders of Palestine, are all of the view that the partition of India in 1947–8 was both inevitable and necessary. They also believe that Indian secularism is a sham and that Muslims have always had a second-class status.

Where does the Militant stand on Kashmiri self-determination? Shouldn’t the process of national unification of the Indian subcontinent be a voluntary process? Has the Indian bourgeoisie turned India into a prison house of nations?

John Smith
Sheffield, England

See ‘Why it is wrong to target India as a prison house of nations’  
 

Elections in Ireland
I would like to amplify Carol Ball’s account of Sinn Fein’s electoral gains in the Irish elections on May 17. The election registered a serious increase in support for the revolutionary nationalist party that is leading the struggle for the reunification of Ireland.

Probably the most dramatic results are seen when looking at the regional vote tallies. In the 26-county state as a whole, Sinn Fein more than doubled its first preference vote as compared to 1997, increasing from 45,000 to 120,000 votes. In Dublin the increase was much more dramatic, from 12,000 to 40,000 votes, more than triple the 1997 results.

Last week’s election of Sinn Fein Councilor Alex Maskey as mayor of Belfast was another dramatic sign of Sinn Fein growth. What kind of political fight did Sinn Fein wage on the campaign trail? Under the slogan of "An Ireland of Equals," the party fought for four basic rights for all Irish people: the right to housing, the right to free education through the university, the right to free medical care, and the right to economic security and social equality.

The fight for the "Ireland of Equals" has drawn thousands of young people into Sinn Fein and its youth organization and this mass of young fighters put the muscle into the electoral struggle.

Roy Inglee
Elsmere, Delaware
 
 
Coupon clippers?
In the June 3 article on Argentina by Patrick O’Neill there appears the term "coupon clipper." I hope you will expunge this term from the Militant’s lexicon.

The term "coupon clipper" refers to a past age when wealthy individuals "clipped coupons" from bonds, and sent these coupons to the bond issuer in order to collect the interest. I don’t know when "coupon clipping" stopped but it certainly doesn’t happen any more. I can’t image that anyone reading this term today understands what it means. I suspect most people would associate it more with working people who "clip coupons" in the daily newspaper to save a few dollars at the supermarket.

Arnold Weissberg
by e-mail
 
 
‘Cointelpro’
The June 17 issue of the Militant just arrived and its extensive coverage of Washington’s efforts to expand secret police powers is right on the mark. You accurately explain that the government’s portrayal of these steps as "benign information-gathering exercises" is utterly false.

I would like to call readers’ attention to the Pathfinder Press title, Cointelpro: The FBI’s Secret War on Political Freedom. Making effective use of previously secret government documents, author Nelson Blackstock documents many cases that demonstrate what the government did with the powers it now seeks to use again.

Although some of the information contained in the book was headline news when it was first revealed in the mid-1970s, the truth documented in this wonderful title is curiously absent from virtually all of today’s press coverage of this subject.

Geoff Mirelowitz
Seattle, Washington
 
 
Palestinian struggle
Revolutionary and anti-colonial struggles do not break out peacefully or politely; to free a nation requires sacrifice and bloodshed. Mr. Fritz argued in a letter to the Militant that the Palestinians should heed the advice of armchair academics and naysayers of dubious repute rather than adopt "any means necessary" to fight the Israeli/American oppressors.

The Algerians would still suffer under the yoke of the French colonizers, and my Kenyan countrypeople would still chafe under imperial rule had the prescriptions of the pacifists won out over the Algerian revolutionaries and the Mau Mau.

Let us follow the example of such proud African militants, and of Malcolm X, and support the Palestinians without any criticism as they struggle against their cruel masters.

Mr. Fritz claims that Palestinian leftists do not support the strategy of Hamas and the Islamic Jihad, but has no proof. Is he trying to divide the Palestinians, which would only help Israel?

Haywood Djiblome
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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