Views in brief

Prison killed my baby brother

ON NOVEMBER 2, 2008 a Texas inmate died of sepsis. His name was Joe P. Ramirez. He was my baby brother Joe.

Joe was 54, and had been sentenced for his third DWI. He had only a few months left to serve. My brother was a diabetic, had heart problems already and had kidney failure. In his letters, he said that the prison wouldn't give him his needed heart medication.

I was called to his deathbed in a free-world hospital in Tyler, Texas. The prison hospital was so bad they sent him to die in a fancier hospital so it could look more respectable for his family.

They wanted to amputate his legs. It was too late. The sepsis from his legs had gone into his bloodstream. I was not allowed to touch him because he was so infected.

The investigator told me I couldn't take pictures of him. He promised that he would send them to me, but he did not.

I am in art school. I was reading how artists fight for the oppressed. Someone needs to bring to light that prisoners are dying because they are not receiving proper medical treatment. Animals get better treatment. Men are dying. True, they are in prison, but my God, they were not sentenced to torture through not being given their medications.

Please help me. I am still grieving. I would let you have the pictures the funeral home took in order to expose the added suffering these men with no rights are made to endure.

Martha Hoffer, from the Internet

We are the majority

I REALLY appreciated reading Todd Chretien's article about different categories of political thinking and action ("The case for a socialist alternative"). If I had read something like that when I was around 20, it would have prevented much confusion and wasted time. Yes, there is a reason Corporate America keeps substantive dissent repressed.

There is one thing Chretien says which merits challenge: "To be a socialist, you have to be prepared to be in a minority." The capitalist class has fooled a lot of people for a long time that capitalism serves the general interest and public good. That myth is taking a severe beating right now, and we have to face the positive reality that it may never recover.

It is plainly obvious that the rich have controlled the economy such that they could loot the treasury. It's happening right before our very eyes, but certainly has ideological cover ("bailout" language for example).

To invert Chretien's conceptualization, the moment demands that we be prepared to be in the majority. This certainly entails dropping self-limiting prejudices, especially given the historical reality that anti-socialist prejudice was initiated in the first place by the masters who now are exposed as having stood for so long in America in a fortress of cards.
Kevin Hornbuckle, Eugene, Ore.

An ideology that turns men into animals

ISRAELI ZIONISTS are clear about the aim of Zionism as it applies to the Palestinian people. In 2004, professor Arnon Sofer said the following in an interview with the Jerusalem Post:

When 2.5 million people live in a closed-off Gaza, it's going to be a human catastrophe. Those people will become even bigger animals than they are today with the aid of an insane, fundamentalist Islam. The pressure on the border is going to be awful. It's going to be a terrible war. So if we want to remain alive, we will have to kill and kill and kill. All day, every day.

Sofer's murderous words have been translated into concrete action by the Israeli Army. In the attack on Gaza, they killed all day, every day for over three weeks.

The Zionists don't want peace; they want the complete elimination of the Palestinian people from the land that was once theirs. That is why no "peace" plan or two-state solution will ever work.

This is what bothers Dr. Sofer most about the conflict:

The only thing that concerns me is how to ensure that the boys and men who are going to have to do the killing will be able to return home to their families and be normal human beings.

They won't come back as normal human beings. Israeli soldiers are animals that are carrying out an eliminationist, genocidal, insane, fundamentalist Zionism.
Helen Redmond, Chicago

Time to fire Donald Trump

NBC IS about to launch another season of The Apprentice. There has always been something grotesque about this celebration of CEO arrogance and the dog-eat-dog culture of Corporate America. Yet it seems particularly obscene now that so many workers have lost their jobs and millions more are struggling just to hang on.

It is a sad comment on our society that people will tune in to be "entertained" by a program whose dramatic climax each week is watching someone be told, "You're fired." While this year's edition will be further trivialized by the inclusion of has-been celebrities as the contestants, The Apprentice is a blot on the public airwaves and a slap in the face to any American suffering the economic and psychological ravages of job loss.

Citizens should contact NBC to protest their airing of The Apprentice. Additionally, the advertisers who make the show possible should be informed that their association with the program does not reflect well on their products. Citizens should consider a boycott of any company insensitive enough to advertise on the program.

It's time for workers to reject this inane testament to Donald Trump's vanity and the vulnerability of the American worker. Let's "fire" NBC and the sponsors of this crass piece of junk.
Chuck Augello, Randolph, N.J.

Stopping the abuse on death row

I AM extremely concerned about the abuse and neglect of the men and women on death row. David Ruiz, an inmate whose historic federal class-action lawsuit kept the state of Texas under court mandate for prison reform for more than 20 years, started a good thing--now we need someone to finish it.

These men and women are being treated inhumanly. The guards are abusing their authority and taking upon themselves to hand down horrific torture to dehumanize these men and women. I was informed that a guard blew his brains out in a parking lot and a mentally challenged inmate gouged out his own eye--but the public never hears of this.

Please, I beg of you to look into this. I don't know where to turn, Please help me.
Vicki West, from the Internet