Letter: Bad news (2002)

Letter to the Editors from the June 2002 issue of the Socialist Standard

Bad news

Dear Editors

Capitalism is the one killing us. When one turns on the radio, television or reads newspapers, there is always repeated similar headlines.

What makes the news “worth” reading has to do with some death somewhere, a death which in sane conditions would have not taken place. The news could also be about war, crime, accidents, poverty and/or some other sort of evil. You could hear, for example, that terrorists have attacked and that thousands of people including children and the disabled are reported to be missing (to void the “impolite” language of saying are reported to have died). “The army in X has overthrown the government and so and so many people are expected to be displaced or dead”. “The war in Y has left many dead, thousands of houses and other property destroyed and many thousands of people are displaced and homeless and are in need of relief food and other basic needs, and an impending disaster is likely due to the overcrowding and lack of sanitation”.

What presently makes news worth listening to or reading is always bad news. Many print and electronic media profit heavily from such headlines. There are individuals, groups and governments who are quick to sponsor and fund war and crime because in the insane capitalistic present society crime and war pay. The arms and ammunition industry (if at all it is an industry anyway) profit from the sale of weapons that are meant for human destruction. Most governments especially in poor and developing countries spend much of their resources and borrowed funds on strengthening their defence and protections at the expense of their citizens.

The physical and mental energy, the financial and material resources that are spent in countering the effects of capitalism by charity groups could be wisely and usefully spent in giving the world’s population scientific socialist education, the only education that opens the minds of people and gives them an understanding of the world we live on. It is this scientific socialist education that is the only intellectual energy that will end capitalism (and with it the evils mentioned earlier).

Weijagye Justus, 

Uganda