Send your letters to the Free Press, PMB #178, 1463 E Republican ST, Seattle WA 98112, or email WAfreepress@gmail.com. Keep them short. Longer letters will be edited down. Letters do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Free Press. Letters which respond to Free Press articles will be given precedence.

Corporate Throw-aways

After reading your articles on injured workers, I also would appreciate an opportunity to voice my opinion of how the Boeing Co. and their self-insurer (Crawford), has affected my life. After I gave my all to them, the only thing I have left is a bunch of employee of the month awards, a broken back with a two foot thorocotomy scar from respiratory infections and occupational asthma, a broken spirit and three boxes of documents. Charges against Boeing are being filed for willful neglect, wrongful termination, and discrimination of a disability.

Thank you for caring about us corporate employee throw-aways and standing up against the giant.

Alexsandra L. Thomas
Milton, WA

Copyright Tip

Thanks ever so much for "Shot Gun Publishing" and "Confessions of a Corporate Bookseller" in your May-June issue. The only defense I know of against the kind of experience Mr. Briggs described is to copyright a work, giving away a couple of copies to friends, before dealing with an agent or publisher--except, of course, doing the publishing yourself. When one does self-publish, holding the copyright, it is always possible to assign permission to print to another publisher, with an option for royalties.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to see both articles--they are very good and enlightening--because one rarely sees such subjects covered in any depth.

Thanks for a very useful publication.

Maria Abdin

Immigration is Excessive

The WFP article "The INS and Outs of 'Immigrant' Labor" supports unionization and fair treatment for farm workers which I certainly agree with. However, I disagree with the article's message that people should be allowed to "work where they want" and castigating the Immigration and Naturalization Service for deporting illegal aliens While the producers of the videos are entitled to their viewpoint, there is the important issue of population growth which must be addressed. At the risk of being labeled racist and "anti-immigrant" (Note: I am anti-immigration policy, not anti-immigrant), I believe that the impacts of uncontrolled immigration on the United States needs to be called-out before we buy into the concept that people be allowed to work where they want. After all, people wanting to come to America to work number potentially in the millions.

The number of legal immigrants for 1997 was estimated to be 1,000,000 with another 300,000 to 500,000 illegal aliens entering the United States each year. At the present rate of immigration, the U. S. population will increase by up to 200 million persons in the next 50 to 60 years. The suggestion is often made that the U. S. needs the supply of cheap, hard-working immigrants to insure future prosperity. If this is so, then 70 to 80 percent of our population growth in the next century will come from our immigration policy and it will just be a matter of time before the U. S. population surpasses that of India and China. The U. S. population is already growing at the fastest rate among the industrialized nations.

Is such rampant, out-of-control population growth really what we want? Will we be able to protect our environment with such growth? Will our cities still be livable and will we still be a truly United States? I don't think so. Yet the message of the article is to allow unlimited immigration so that people can "work where they want" and faults the Immigration and Naturalization Service for doing it's job.

Why is it that the Washington Free Press prints articles seemingly promoting unlimited immigration and defaming those opposing this nation's uncontrolled immigration policy as racists or "anti-immigrant", yet does not print articles opposing such views? Is it because it has become a "feel good" liberal axiom which should not be questioned? If the Washington Free Press is interested in printing an opposing view to that of the author, this writer will be pleased to suggest the names of any number of experts on the subject of immigration.

Howard A. Pellett
Anacortes, WA

Wrong about Kosovo

The Free Press coverage of Kosovo (May-June, 1999) got it wrong from start to finish. The front cover portrayed Kosovo in ruins, under attack by NATO warplanes, as if the Serbian destruction of Kosovo's villages and the expulsion of its population never happened. Not a marauding Yugoslav soldier is to be seen; no mass graves, now being discovered daily, are depicted. The cover seems designed to feed the misconception, more common among progressives than others, that this is NATO's war.

David Bacon develops the same theme. Referring to the conflict as a "civil war between Serbs and Albanians," he seems unaware of a decade of Yugoslav government-imposed apartheid, long-term planning for the destruction of Kosovar communities, and the escalation of a purge of ethnic Albanians that began months before NATO's involvement.

Resorting to the passive voice--the last refuge of a writer bent on deception--he writes that villages "have been destroyed" and the civilian population "has been increasingly treated as indistinguishable from actual combatants." These were not phenomena of nature, but rather the actual goals of the Yugoslav campaign.

Bacon proceeds with a hefty dose of disinformation, including eight paragraphs purporting to link NATO's intervention to Caspian Sea oil. But he never gets around to saying that--fortunately, since a pipeline from the Caspian would not go near Kosovo.

The interview with Vanya Vujinovic continues with similar themes and adds another: uncritical acceptance of Serbian nationalism.

As the war ends, we are left to untangle the peculiar response of the Left. We have a history of actively supporting the oppressed, from Mississippi to Vietnam to El Salvador to Chiapas. How is it that progressives utterly failed to act in support of the Kosovo Albanians, whose entire society was the target of obliteration by Serbian forces?

In the face of a genuine human rights tragedy, the Left has either remained silent or reserved most of its sympathy for the Yugoslav aggressors. After this, how can progressives be taken seriously as a force for peace and justice? The knee-jerk anti-interventionism exhibited here discredits the movements that have for so many years struggled for justice.

For background information and commentary on Kosovo, please see http://www.glypx.com/BalkanWitness

Roger Lippman