> Is it your touchstone of ideological purity to have nothing to do
> with anyone or anything associated with the Workers World Party?
No. Unlike you, Yoshie, I'm not interested in academic left parlor games. Do you honestly believe that the average working person, with whom you seem to have little contact (judging from your posts) would take the WWP seriously, especially once they were exposed to its rhetoric and desire for control? I want nothing to do with the WWP because they are fascists and parasites. But you are free to frolic with the supporters of Chinese Stalinism, which I can see you have no trouble doing.
> Why not,
> then, make not working with AFL-CIO officials the litmus test, since
> you say "You cannot apologize for state terror on the one hand, then
> convincingly oppose it on the other"?
Actually, I was opposed to the AFL-CIO when I was active in Central American issues during the 80s, given that their then-leader, Lane Kirkland, was pro-contra. But like the Teamsters, there are dissidents in the AFL-CIO, and the ones I came in contact with during that period were truly committed to stopping Reagan's wars and thus were in oppositon to the national union's stance.
> Is there any reason you think that the Workers World Party's support
> for the Chinese state is a larger threat to the workers of the world
> than the AFL-CIO officialdom's support for U.S. foreign policy?
I think it's a threat to Chinese workers, many of whom toil in prison sweatshops turning out product for China's foreign investors. As for the AFL-CIO, see above.
> What
> makes it OK to support strikers together with AFL-CIO officials but
> not OK to work with Workers World organizers (among many others, mind
> you) to get an anti-war movement going?
You think the WWP is opposed to war? I have a friend who was in Tienanmen Square during the crackdown. He spent the better part of eight hours face down on the pavement while a Chinese soldier periodically hit him with a rifle butt. All the while my friend heard students pleading for their lives and then being silenced with a couple of shots. Your buddies in the WWP celebrated this. That you can make common cause with these people is at best disgusting, at worst insane. Good luck with your "anti-war" movement, Yoshie.
DP