> At 7:35 PM -0800 3/10/03, Brian O. Sheppard wrote:
> >WWP's coziness with N. Korea is as fair a target for criticism as
> >the Bush Administration's warmongering. We don't have choose between
> >the two.
>
> On the eve of "Shock and Awe," aka the Second Coming of Hiroshima,
> I'd expect US leftists to be able to prioritize their tasks of
> criticism.
Many people are pretty adept at multi-tasking, and can think/analyze more than one thing at a time. You have done everything but come out and explicitly say they shouldn't do this re: N. Korea the WWP, and should reserve criticism of N. Korea and/or WWP for a future, unspecified, point in time.
> that the WWP is one of the few -- the only? -- US left-wing political
> organization that has done something about US policy toward Koreas.
Really? Then I suppose you're not familiar with many of the unions that have worked with the KCTU (Korean Confederation of Trade Unions) to oppose US trade policies in the Koreas and expose to the US public the effects these have had on the people there. The I-99 conference in San Fran had delegates from the KCTU, for example.
> For instance, WWP folks organized the Korea Truth Commission,
> investigating "more than 160 instances of US-led military attacks on
> more than 2.5 million Korean non-combatants (Washington Post, June
> 13, 2000 ) during the Korean War"
> <http://www.kimsoft.com/2001/kr-truth.htm>;
I was subscribed to their paper when they conducted this "Truth Commission." (I've been to WWP meetings and have met people like La Riva, Richard Becker, etc., for what it's worth.) Of course, the paper didn't report it as organized by the WWP. It was a "broad coalition" of disparate groups that they happened to be one small part of. The WWP, like the RCP, is usually careful not to portray itself in its media releases as the main agent or organizing force of an event.
> some of my friends and
> acquaintances from Japan and South Korea, most of them non-Leninists,
> attended it. What are the IWW and other anarchists -- or any other
> left-wing organizations -- doing about US policy toward Koreas, North
> and South (this isn't a rhetorical question)?
1) What the IWW (not nominally anarchist; some IWW members, for example, are CP-USA members, others are Greens, etc.) or anarchists are or aren't doing has nothing to do with the WWP's support of the N. Korean govt. and whether that support is defensible or not. It's a separate subject.
Also, let me ask you something: are we supposed to post our activist resumes before we're allowed the privilege of critical thought? What is the criteria for being able to have an opinion on WWP's support of the N. Korean govt? Attendance at X number of demos, field work in X number of campaigns? If you have the answer, please let me know.
Nominally leftist groups like the WWP that support unsupportable governments are fair game for criticism. The activist credentials of the critic are irrelevant if the points being made by the critic are sound. I'm sure you are familiar with the ad hominem logical fallacy?
Brian
--