<HTML>This seems to follow in the great tradition of political calculation set forth by Mao, who averred that Stalin was right 60% of the time. Which meant, I suppose, that only 60% of the victims of his purges deserved to die, in Mao's august opinion. But this is a most interesting notion of international working class solidarity that can write off the independent trade unions of the Polish working class, which no one in their right mind denies had the allegiance of that class, because they were in opposition to the Stalinist State then governing Poland. Seems like historically irrelevant DeLeonism in the making to me. I guess we will have to wait for dusk and the wings of Minerva's owl to see who has the better vision here. Doug writes: Oddly enough, I think they're right about 80% of the time, <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE style="BORDER-LEFT: #0000ff 2px solid; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px; PADDING-LEFT: 5px">but they're just so annoying that you want to cut off their mikes and have them hauled out of the room... Going way back, they were right about Polish Solidarity, which they dismissed as a tool of the Church and the CIA. They're right in condemning illusions that laptop bombardiers have about humanitarian imperialism. And they're right in passages like these: "The capitalist class runs the Republican and Democratic parties, whose main difference is not *what* they say but *how* they do it. The Republicans make no bones about being the party of 'big business' in viciously going after the working class, blacks, immigrants and the poor. The Democrats lie and do the same thing."</BLOCKQUOTE> Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869) Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- </HTML>