Which is mostly untrue. Some elements in the anti-globalization Left have shifted their direction, but most of the anti-globalization movement continues to work on anti-capitalist activism. It's just that many of us have added anti-war activism to our fill plates.
> Moreover, Ms. Featherstone writes that "this war has inspired a
> far-flung and passionate opposition movement." She cites a November
> 10 meeting of "hundreds of student activists" held at scores of
> campuses, including Boston University, Georgia State University,
> George Washington University, DePaul University and the University of
> California, Berkeley, all convened to "plan campaigns and establish
> coalitions." She talks of the "peace camps" set up at the
> Universities of Indiana and Wisconsin and the University of
> Pennsylvania. True, the students therein are now clearly in a
> minority, but are most anxious to reach others and stop preaching to
> the choir.
The hundreds of student activists to those meetings were "representatives" from campus anti-war groups. The right wing wants to judge the student movement by the same standards that the boss media applies: if they aren't rioting on campus, there is no student movement.
> Ms. Featherstone's remedies for that situation are rather
> comical. She notes that for a short while, the peace movement could
> avoid attacking a popular war at home by concentrating on what she
> calls "the humanitarian focus;" and like Noam Chomsky, make the
> argument that the bombing was going to produce starvation and prevent
> humanitarian aid and food from getting into Afghanistan. But now, she
> writes, the argument that the bombing "made the situation even worse"
> is falling apart, since now there are "reports that more food aid was
> entering Afghanistan." The poor left-wing peace movement; just when
> they thought they got an argument, reality interfered with it and
> they are left back at the beginning.
Last time I checked, the situation for the Afghani people remains bleak, with the food aid that is coming in being too little, too late.
> Indeed, she quotes one activist
> who tells her "now the United States is helping, and the situation is
> dramatically improving." It is hard, one can see from her writing, to
> continue to attack the United States and to resist being in its
> corner this time around. No wonder their new tactic is now to "turn
> their attention to the 'war' at home;" to avoid the actual fighting
> and to attack the administration for "racist scapegoating and the
> frightening assaults on civil liberties." The Left, as usual, is not
> concerned with the issue of the necessity of fighting the war against
> terrorism; its real goal is to oppose the United States, and to use
> any and all arguments to create an antiwar movement that will
> interfere with our necessary and just war.'
I think opposing the United State is a legitimate goal of the anti-war movement. The United States is the number 1 exporter of state terrorism in the war today and if the current unelected regime that has gutted the constitution isn't reason enough for a revolution, then nothing is.
> If Weisberg thinks that
> the magazine's other articles, accusing the Attorney General of
> "terrorizing the Constitution" and accusing the administration of
> creating a new "national security state" is meant to do anything but
> oppose the war effort, he is living in fantasy land.
The concern over the "terrorizing the Constitution" is a concern held by those on the left and the right. It's even a concern that has managed to penetrate the boss media's newspapers, which normally are just house organs for the State Department and the Pentagon.
<< Chuck0 >>
Infoshop.org -> http://www.infoshop.org/ Alternative Press Review -> http://www.altpr.org/ Practical Anarchy Online -> http://www.practicalanarchy.org/ Anarchy: AJODA -> http://www.anarchymag.org/ Factsheet 5 -> http://www.factsheet5.com/ MutualAid.org (coming soon) AIM: AgentHelloKitty
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).