Letters to the editor
November, 2005
Join together to resist torture & corruption
Unions are not necessary
Response to fish article
Join together to resist torture & corruption
Regarding your article ‘Do Sen. Stevens and Rep. Young support U.S. torture policies?’ [October, 2005]: You wrote very well, and it is important that people be aware of these atrocities which are perpetrated by our own government and military. Here is some additional information to validate and expound upon your article.
I am an organizer with the Lyndon LaRouche PAC for a New Bretton Woods. In August, we began distributing a pamphlet that outlined and exposed the U.S. policies, advocated by Cheney et al. in the White House, of preemptive nuclear war, terrorism against U.S. citizens, psychiatric torture at Abu Ghraib, et al., and other horrifying truths that have been documented publicly, but downplayed by a mindless mass media and ignored by an apathetic population.
Yet, despair not! It is very likely that in the upcoming days and weeks the Bush-Cheney regime will be forced into early retirement, as many officials and politically active people, even those who disagree with LaRouche, are realizing he is right when he says our nation cannot survive another three years of this corruption. The massive price-gouging by oil cartels on the price of petroleum is having a disastrous hyperinflationary effect on our economy, very similar to what happened in Weimar Germany in 1923. Farmers, truckers, factories, hospitals, military bases and even families are starting to shut down. Yet as the existing free-trade system reaches its boundary condition there is the opportunity to push through a return to the U.S. Constitutional system of statecraft, which is national banking, fixed “fair trade” exchange rates, infrastructure development, and innovations in the Classical sciences and arts for the benefit of all humanity. That policy shift is the essence of the New Bretton Woods program as well.
LaRouche is hosting an international webcast on November 16, 2005, at 9am Alaska time, in which he will address international heads of state, members of the U.S. Congress, labor officials, economic policy institute members, American citizens, and other important decision makers on how we must act to avert what would otherwise be an untimely end to human civilization as a whole. The webcast will be broadcast from Washington D.C., and can be viewed online at http://www.larouchepac.com. I urge you to visit this website, tell your friends about it, and to watch this webcast.
Ian Overton
Anchorage LaRouche Youth Movement
http://www.larouchepac.com
Unions are not necessary
Your October, 2005 issue [‘Challenges’] implies that employers who don’t allow their workers to join a union therefore exploit them. I know of non-profit organizations, not unionized, which treat their employees very fairly. Generalizations are chancy!
Albert W. Oakes
Response to fish article
Cathy Holt’s article [October, 2005] purports that Alaska is one of only two states without fish testing. This is wrong. The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation has been conducting a Fish Monitoring Program in collaboration with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the International Pacific Halibut Commission, and Alaska subsistence users and commercial fishermen to collect and test fish for certain environmental contaminants. During the first two years of the project, DEC analyzed 520 samples of a variety of fish for heavy metals, primarily from marine waters. This report presents persistent organic pollutants data from 89 fish samples (18 chum, 17 Chinook, 24 sockeye, 11 halibut, 8 sheefish and 11 sablefish).
The program, initiated in 2001 is ongoing. DEC along with other research partners continued sampling in 2004 to collect more information regarding the health of Alaska’s fish. DEC continues to evaluate fish for heavy metals including mercury, persistent organic pollutants, and other chemicals recently recognized as being persistent and bioaccumulative, such as fire retardants.
We understand how important fish are to Alaskans as a primary diet and are working diligently to give the public the information it needs to make informed decisions about how much fish to include in their diets. According to the data set so far, the State of Alaska recommends unlimited consumption of traditional Alaskan species.
Far from being reluctant to share our results, we have posted them on our website. Our mission is to protect public health and the environment, and to give the public the information they need to make healthy choices.
Our most recent results can be found on our fish monitoring program website at http://www.dec.state.ak.us/eh/vet/fish.htm
Lynda Giguere
Public Information Officer, Department of Environmental Conservation