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Published: Apr 9, 2008

Ha, Typical Kruschevite Revisionist!

Your article on the Socialist Workers Party [News, "Where Have All The Trotskyites Gone?" Dana Henry, April 3, 2008] painted it as irrelevant but benign. As a former member of their youth group, I have a different view.

If you want to make a statement against capitalism, go ahead and vote for their candidates — but I'd advise strongly against getting involved with their organization, if you value your intellectual and emotional freedom.

Notwithstanding their public claims about internal democracy, you may find that thinking for yourself — even about minor questions, and even just inside your own head (which they may ask you about) — really isn't tolerated, and that (not necessarily pleasant) means will be found to oust you if you insist on doing so. At least that's what happened to me. And reports I got from others subsequently — e.g., of members being encouraged to share apartments so they could vet each others' mail for "bad influences" — indicate that my experience wasn't a fluke.

For more information on avoiding or getting out of abusive and manipulative groups, visit the International Cultic Studies Association (which I support but don't represent) at icsahome.com. They're meeting in Philadelphia this year.

Eric Hamell
Via citypaper.net

The article in the Slant section titled "Bush, Whack," by David Faris [Op-Ed, March 20, 2008] attempts to criticize some of the policies of the current administration.

However, he, like many other supporters of the Democratic Party, fails to acknowledge that many of these illegal, immoral and criminal policies have been approved by a Democratic-led Congress and Senate. The Democrats are responsible for continuing to authorize funding for the Iraq war, and many of them voted for the war.

The talk about "our moral standing in the world (whatever that is)" is naïve, since many in the world have regarded the U.S. as an outlaw state, and its leaders (including Clinton) as war criminals.

But the claim that Cuba is one of "the worst regimes in human history" can only be made by someone who has swallowed all the U.S. propaganda against the island, or by a child.

Cuba has been the subject of terrorist attacks since the triumph of the Revolution in 1959, even by Kennedy, who was president when the U.S. organized the Bay of Pigs invasion. There has been an immoral blockade since the early '60s which the UN has overwhelmingly rejected for about 15 years, backed by Democratic as well as Republican administrations.

Since the triumph of the Revolution, millions of people all over the world have died as a result of U.S. foreign and domestic policy. Both parties have enabled these policies. On the other hand, Cuba's effect in many countries has been the opposite: sending doctors even to places like Costa Rica. And receiving university students with free scholarships (even American students) because they can't get them in their countries.

Are we just supposed to believe that these claims against Cuba are so true that they do not have to be supported by evidence?

Dr. Carlos Morales-Mateluna
San José, Costa Rica

I am a very biased reader of articles about Traces of the Trade, being a close friend of Katrina, but I am inspired to write to tell you how well-written, both from a literary and intellectual perspective, I found your article [Cover Story, "Slavers in the Family," Sam Adams, April 3, 2008].

Good writing seems rare these days — so rare that when phrases are well-turned, ideas well-explored and paragraphs well-flowing, the work is striking.

John Bell
Via e-mail

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