LETTERS: September 23

Wrong?

In your introduction to your online “A complete guide to the Wall Street crisis” you say: “The week of September 15, 2008 has been a dramatic and unprecedented period in the world of high finance. The economic crisis is not over despite what some pundits and politicians have claimed. A series of government interventions have changed the map of banking and finance.”

This is incorrect and misinforms your readers. This has happened over and over again. Please correct this. The whole point is that the global bankers have repeated this scenario repeatedly, and the political repression to follow will likewise be a repetition of history.

And please, hurry up.

David Rubinson
Via e-mail

Editor’s note: “History repeats itself. The first time tragedy, second time farce,” Karl Marx once said in an essay taking issue with German philosopher Georg Hegel who argued that there “is nothing new under the Sun” and historic facts appear again and again. With history — economic, political and social — there is always the new and developing.

Capitalism in crisis

The United States is facing the worst crisis of the capitalist system since 1929. I go to the PWW to read the CPUSA reaction. There is none. Wonderful new headquarters, but the party cannot put together a rapid response as the giants of the capitalist system collapse! The last thing on the PWW blog: the Large Hadron Collider explained via hip hop, on Sept. 17. On the front page of the PWW website there are two stories dated Sept. 18: Hurricane Ike and another Obama campaign process story. Marx, Engels, Lenin — they’re rolling in their graves.

Mike Donovan
Via e-mail

Editor’s note: Well, Mike, our small staff was working on our print edition deadline, and posted all the stories on the meltdown as quick as we could, on Sept. 19. We’re not at the rapid response level of The New York Times, yet. But you can help us get there. Donate to the fund drive and get others to do the same: .

The truth about oil

There is a lot of hoopla about American oil for American use. Expand drilling and reduce U.S. dependency on “foreign” oil! Beat OPEC, Russia, Mexico, Venezuela, et all-them-fureners cetera. In Colorado, beat Wyoming out of those “generous” oil field fees! Pass House Bill whatever it is!

Sounds good? A pity it isn’t true. The truth is that superior quality U.S. oil will go on the “global free market” to compete not for lowest but for highest prices. Which we’ll have to pay to buy back our used-to-be own oil. Actually, not even oil but “oil futures” contracts. The happy playground for the rich and greedy. Called speculator. The hidden hand of the euphemistic free market. A cover-all term for gotcha!

And just another Ponzi scheme which, if allowed to continue, will almost certainly result in another “too big to fall” taxpayer bailout. Just like the savings and loan fiasco of the 1980s and the recent mortgage market one. To be financed by even more taxpayer deficit spending.

Oh well, it’s all just play money anyway isn’t it? Roll the presses! Keep selling T-bills to China and cover the interest on these with more deficit spending and more T-bills and more balance of trade deficits so they have the money to buy more T-bills to collect even more interest to require even more — et bloody cetera!

With the ultimate bailout after the crash coming from where?

Bill Ramsay
Clifton CO

Editor’s note: Reader Ramsay sent this letter via USPS Aug. 27. Prescient!

9/11

Your editorial, “Wrong course after 9/11,” avoids bringing up the many contradictions of the official government report of the 9/11 tragedy which was undertaken at the demand of families who had lost loved ones. In the end, some families rejected the official report as a complete whitewash.

The PWW editorial accepts the government line that it was Osama bin Laden (a creature of the CIA) and his assorted terrorists that pulled off this remarkably sophisticated technological feat.

It has been well noted that this was the first time in all the history of burning skyscrapers that the steel superstructure was not left standing after the building had burned away. There is so much factual material by engineers, architects and research scholars, so many books written about the true nature of this horrendous event, proofs showing how controlled demolition brought down the three skyscrapers. A brief hint that there were dissident voices would have been closer to the truth in your editorial.

Philip Stein
New York NY

Land for the landless

Paraguay’s new leader Lugo is providing land for the landless of Paraguay. If Paraguay can do this for their people then surely the richest nation on earth can nationalize land and distribute it to the landless here. Our congressmen should stop being puppets of the Empire and give the land to landless poor families, land for public housing for the homeless. This is real family values.

Here in Montana land for the landless means Plum Creek land for the landless of Montana, for the poor families and for out homeless.

Daniel Gawain Waters
Troy MT