Raimondo is pissed off because he is a smart guy who can't figure out what is going on. He throws some insults about granola-eating hippies, but he knows that the images on TV don't jive with that insult. Well, it is embarassing when those folks flash peace symbols at the cops, which has got to be as effective as flipping them off.
He makes some interesting points about the failure of the New Left to protest the war in Yugoslavia. He's right about that, but he's wrong when he thinks the New Left is leading the current anti-globalization protests. The New Left tried to mount protests against that war, but they did so in that ineffective fashion that everybody is fucking tired of. Here in D.C., the International Action Center called for a big demo, which happened the day the bombing stopped. What was the demo like? It was hours of standing in the hot sun listening to speakers from every goddamn organization that had sponsored the demo, followed by a lame march across the Potomoc to the Pentagon ON A SATURDAY.
That's right, nobody home to see us. No commuters on the streets. Very little media coverage. Protest failure. Notch up another defeat for the "New Left".
In retrospect, it's an interesting thought exercise to figure out what would have happened if the current crop of anti-capitalists activists had planned the resistance. Perhaps a clash with the cops at Andrews Air Force base several weeks after the war started? Sabotage of military hardware? Destruction of recruiting offices?
For an anti-war movement with veterans from the 1960s, they sure forgot what happened back then.
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INTERNATIONALISM IN PRACTICE
An American soldier in a hospital explained how he was wounded: He said, "I was told that the way to tell a hostile Vietnamese from a friendly Vietnamese was to shout ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ If he shoots, he’s unfriendly. So I saw this dude and yelled ‘To hell with Ho Chi Minh!’ and he yelled back, ‘To hell with President Johnson!’ We were shaking hands when a truck hit us."
(from 1,001 Ways to Beat the Draft, by Tuli Kupferburg).