Anna was an unassuming person who felt that she did not have the depth of political understanding that she would have wished, but she had an unerring working-class response to world events. She was active in the York Committee to End the War in Vietnam and was involved in the defense of the Cuban Revolution.

Discussing her life in the last months before her death, it was obvious that she counted the 11 years she worked in the socialist movement as the most important years of her life.

Bea Bryant
Blenheim, Ontario  
 

New Zealand economy
An error was introduced in editing the article I wrote, "Labour calls early election in New Zealand," as it appeared in the printed edition of the July 29 Militant. It says, "Labour’s course, and its popularity in the polls, reflects the fact that it has been in office during the strongest upturn in the business cycle lasting more than a decade."

This should have said, "During the strongest upturn in the business cycle in a decade. . . ." There has been an upturn in the business cycle in New Zealand, but only over the past two years. It is the strongest since a sharp but short-lived upturn in 1994. The previous upturn to that was in 1984. Between these highs, annual growth rates have been well below the average for OECD countries over the past two decades, at times dipping into negative figures. The country has dropped from the top half of the OECD rankings to the bottom third.

The current upturn, after a decade of stagnation, is a major factor in the popularity of the current Labour Party-led government that was reelected here July 27, despite the impact on working people of a growing social crisis.

Michael Tucker
Auckland, New Zealand
 
 
Please process my sub ASAP
Please process my sub to the Militant as soon as possible. It’s the only paper that tells the truth. I had a job in the defense industry as an electrical engineer. It took me 10 years of going to school part time to obtain the degree to qualify for the job. In less than two I’m out the door (laid off).

I’m finding no takers in Engineering for a middle-aged unemployed Black man with hardly any experience. Unemployment, the top rate, is less than half of what I was earning. I can’t earn any more money, because if I do they take it out of my benefits. So I’m effectively on "welfare." This is cruel. (I can read the Militant on the Web, but having the actual paper is even better.)

John Harris
Providence, Rhode Island
 
 
On Venezuela
I have found your coverage on Venezuela excellent and informative. I believe I disagree with your dislike of Chávez’s attempt to reign in the CTV [Venezuelan Workers Federation] and your overall analysis of Chávez.

The CTV is an organization that represents the Venezuelan capitalist class. It has succeeded over the years in fooling a certain portion of the relatively well-off Venezuelan working class on this point, but after its support of the bosses’ strike there really can be no doubt in the mind of a politically educated viewer. The wholesale recall of its leadership attempted by Chávez would have been an enormous step forward for the Venezuelan working class.

Hugo Chávez is not a reactionary and his labor policy is not and has never been reactionary. The slow pace of change in Venezuela is a major part of what has kept him and the Bolivarian Republic alive to this point, facing as they do almost alone the might of the world sole superpower.

Theodore Jones
by e-mail
 
 
Israeli bombing
In a recent article in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, a military source was quoted as saying, in response to the killing of Palestinian civilians in the bombing of a building in Gaza in which a Hamas leader was staying, that the deaths were due to "gaps in information and assessments with regard to the presence of civilians in the apartment in which Shehadeh was hiding out."

Are they trying to tell us that the IDF [Israeli Defense Forces] actually believed that an entire apartment building in the most densely populated area in the world might have been free of civilians? Sounds like a pretty big intelligence error. Or a big lie.

Ari Paul
Ann Arbor, Michigan

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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