(November 29, 2010)
[Want your letters published? Then, please include your first and last names and your city and state of residence. Also, please, enter in the subject line of your e-mail "Letter to the Editor," and specify the article or the subject on which you are commenting.] Gilles d'Aymery on Why the economy shouldn't come back To the Editor: I've liked very much Gilles d'Aymery's 3-part series on the (US) economy. I noted the affinities with our approach -- I have dubbed it the Uno-Sekine approach after Kozo Uno, who died in 1977, and his most gifted student, Tomohiko Sekine, who is now retired. With two of us living on one pension we are not always able to send financial help to all the good people we would like to support but I will send a gift copy of my book Capitalism and the Dialectic (Pluto 2009), if you send a mailing address. If and when you read the last chapter you will see what I mean by affinities. Keep up the excellent work. John R. Bell Toronto, Canada - November 15, 2010 Gilles d'Aymery responds:In turn John Bell wrote: Not to worry, Gilles. If you can write that well on the economy and take positions so close to my own it suggests that I have perhaps spent too much time on Marxian value theory. To which Gilles d'Aymery answered: ********** Burn, Baby, Burn: Gilles d'Aymery's The Economy Is Not Coming Back: Part III: The Reasons it Shouldn't To the Editor: Has the author read The Impending World Energy Mess by Hirsch/Bezdek/Wendling? I would think not. Had he, he would have found in Chapter 17, that the authors state: "To effectively mitigate the enormous oil shortage problem while also trying to reduce world carbon dioxide emissions is impossible in our judgment." CO2 emissions should be the very last issue to tackle considering the absolute need for fossil fuels. Whether the climate changes or not the human race will adapt, but without fossil fuels the human race will vanish. Better adaptation than vanishment! We may lose pelicans and a few more species, but plastic defines and makes possible our way of life. We are the top of the food chain for better or worse, and we should aim to remain at the top. Regards, Darrell Johnson Tempe, Arizona, USA - November 18, 2010 Gilles d'Aymery responds: No, I've not read the book but did read a review by Frank Kaminski and a sharp rebuttal of said chapter by Michael Bendzela, both posted on the Energy Bulletin Web site. Bendzela actually cites the same excerpt. Mr. Johnson belongs apparently to the baby-burn-baby crowd that wants to keep exploiting the earth for the benefit of a depraved materialistic "civilization." ********** Eritrea, Zimbabwe, same combat? Gregory Elich's Zimbabwe Under Siege To the Editor: Hello, I read the 2002 piece by Gregory Elich with interest. I am an Eritrean American who has watched a similar destabilization campaign against Eritrea. Eritrea achieved independence after a bitter 30-year armed struggle that ended on 24 May 1991. Eritreans spent the next two years preparing for the referendum which took place in April of 1993. 98% of the Eritrean people voted for outright independence. After our flag was hoisted at the UN, we put all the pain behind us, the loss of 65,000 of our brightest and best, decided to let bygones be bygones, never asked for a cent of compensation from the powers that be who were responsible for our thirty year long suffering and embarked on an ambitious development strategy to heal our wounds and our land. In 1994, out of the blue, problems with Yemen and the Hanish islands resulted in skirmishes between the two brotherly countries and the issue was resolved thru arbitration. In 1997, the minority regime in Ethiopia decided to redraw the map of Tigray and incorporated large swatches of sovereign Eritrean territories including Badme. The peace talks went nowhere and a deadly war broke out. The United States took Ethiopia's side throughout the war and soon after the peace agreements were signed in Algiers in 2000, the aggressive vilification and defamation campaigns against the government and people of Eritrea began. The cyber campaigns were headed by self professed "academics, intellectuals and professionals," individuals with dubious histories and backgrounds, and they were summarily rejected by the Eritrean Diaspora. I wrote about them in an article on American Chronicle (US-Eritrea relations soured by design). A few days later, a couple of folks from the US State Department came to my house early in the morning and asked me questions about the article. They then left telling me not to write about it again. Of course I didn't stop...everything that I found out was out there, I didn't put anything out there that was a secret. Eritrea is a young country and everyone knows everyone in the Diaspora, especially those who were engaged in the struggle for independence, so everyone knows who these folks are that are running around with groups like Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch, and Reporters Sans Frontiers. The lady spearheading the Eritrea campaign at AI is Tricia Hepner who entered Eritrea as an "anthropology professor." Richard Reid from Chatham House entered Eritrea as a "history professor." Paulos Tesfagiorgis, an NED recruit, was also a professor in Eritrea during that time. The "journalists" that are mentioned ad nauseam were all trained by a visiting journalism professor, Neil Skene (Creative Loafing), and are now in Europe, Canada, and the U.S. after having left Eritrea illegally. They have all formed "human rights" and "democracy" organizations and have been churning out reports about Eritrea for the last 10 years. The other day, I found out that one of the Eritrean recruits had been provided a platform at Arizona University to talk about "Human Rights Violations in Eritrea." At a college in D.C., the group Voice of the Martyrs organized an event to show "religious persecution" in Eritrea. What next? I did a bit of research last year on the religious groups that entered Eritrea as PVOs with USAID and their agendas to "reach" the unreached people (Moslems). They entered Eritrea as humanitarian NGOs soon after the border conflict ended. I have written about all these things and the Eritrean Diaspora has not been deterred by the incessant anti-Eritrea campaigns. They have actually strengthened the Diaspora and despite the "travel warnings" by the US State Department, over 23000 youth from all over the world spent the summer of 2010 in Eritrea and participated in the youth festival held there. When the US-sponsored resolution 1907 that imposed sanctions against Eritrea were adopted on 23 December 2009, the Eritrean Diaspora sponsored a world wide demonstration in which over 100,000 petitions were signed and rallies were held in Washington, D.C., San Francisco, Melbourne, and Geneva. Over 11 thousand showed up for the D.C. demonstrations (park service figures). So it is not the Eritrean people that we are trying to reach, rather the American public, American intellectuals and thinkers like those at Swans who can smell a rat a mile away... Sophia Tesfamariam Reston, Virginia, USA - November 15, 2010 ********** We appreciate and welcome your comments. Please, enter in the subject line of your e-mail "letter to the editor," and specify the article or the subject you are commenting on at the beginning of your e-mail. Also, ***PLEASE,*** sign your e-mail with your name ***AND*** add your city, state, country, address, and phone number. 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