Mailbag
Right to withhold one's laborTo the editor: In response to Richard Bonomo's letter in the July 1 issue, the fact that the attendees at the EAA Convention, who were mostly active or retired military, applauded when they heard the news that President Ronald Reagan had broken the Air Traffic Controllers strike can be interpreted a couple of ways. One: they were happy that the airports would be back in operation soon, or two: they were happy that Reagan had lowered the boom on PATCO, whose members for the most part were also former military, but had the audacity to form a union. The right to withhold one's labor is absolute. Anything less is slavery. "No-strike clauses" are the invention of legislatures and carry with them the presumption of fair-bargaining practices. When that doesn't happen, more drastic measures must take place. As for the word "Contra" is concerned, it is the name that those who opposed the democratically elected government of Nicaragua called themselves. Contra comes from Spanish for "counter revolutionary." It is not the label that the "Marxist sympathizers" of the Sandinistas gave them. "Contra" has since entered the lexicon of the English language and has come to include all of the groups that the U.S. government has supported in Central America. Many of these Contras were trained by our own Army at the School of the Americas in Fort Benning, Ga. Their other name is "Right-Wing Death Squads." James Joseph Patrick Maloney, Madison Liberation of Chaldean CatholicsTo the editor: During the reign of Saddam Hussein before the Iraqi War, Chaldean Catholics were subjected to persecution on a constant basis. Fr. Jacob Yasso, pastor of Scared Heart Chaldean Church in Detroit, Mich., has counseled thousands of Chaldean Catholic refugees from Iraq. He learned that the main place for martyrdom for thousands of Chaldean Catholics was in front of the city hall in Telkaipe near Baghdad. The means of execution was by hanging. Parents, brothers, and sisters of the victims were forced to watch and ordered to clap their hands while the victims were dying. Approximately 200,000 Chaldean Catholics managed to escape from Iraq to enter the United States. A large number of them settled in the Detroit area. The others settled in metropolitan cities in the U.S.A. Thousands more fled to European countries. The Iraqi War has liberated the remaining Chaldean Catholics just as Polish Catholics were liberated from the tyranny of Nazi Germany and the communist Soviet Union. As fellow Catholics, should we not rejoice over the liberation of the Chaldean Catholics just as we rejoiced over the liberation of Polish Catholics? Hopefully the new government in Iraq will continue the liberation of the Chaldean Catholics. Charles J. Sippel, Waterloo Response to previous letterEditor's note: A Mailbag letter in the June 24th issue of the Catholic Herald discussed former President Ronald Reagan and the assassination of Archbishop Oscar Romero in El Salvador. He was killed on March 24, 1980. That was over seven months before Reagan was elected. Reagan was inaugurated to his first term on Jan. 20, 1981, 10 months after the killing. At the time of Archbishop Romero's assassination, Jimmy Carter was the president and was providing aid to the El Salvadoran government. Thanks to several readers for clarifying this information.
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