----- Original Message ----- From: "Lance Murdoch" <lbotalk at lancemurdoch.org>
On Sat, 31 Jan 2004, Thomas Seay wrote:
> Justification can be found for all things, and I
> am sure even if the Becker bros. would witness such a
> place, they would defend it somehow (probably with the
> worn out argument ("Who kills more people, North Korea
> or US imperialism?"). After all, their entire
> identites are plugged into the Workers World Party.
With George W. Bush making war on the world, it amazes me that the mostly white yuppie denizens that inhabit this list are spending their time bashing one of the gears of his "axis of evil". Then again, maybe it doesn't. Some conservative was recently telling me how horrible North Korea's dictatorship was, so I asked him if he supported the South Korean dictatorship of Park Chunghee. He'd never heard of him, he simply informed me that South Korea was free since we helped "liberate" it in the 1950's. From the US media, or sources like this list, I could see the information that South Korea was a dictatorship for decades would never be discussed, and might even be disputed if brought up. Countries that are not autonomous are not free. Thus, the only list we can look at to consider if a non-industrialized country is free or not is that of the US list of "rogue nations". This list in hand, we can go down the list and see if any of them are free. In the US hagiography, Guatemala is more of a free country right now than Cuba. It has "free elections" after all, right?
I see a lot of whining about WWP. This seems to be because the WWP is actually out doing stuff - organizing anti-war demonstrations, solidarity with countries on the Bush's hit list and so forth. Actually getting off your ass and doing something instead of going to the Socialist Scholars Conference and pontificating on Zizek's latest development on the connection between Lenin and post-modernism must rile the white yuppies who are being shown up by people out on the street actually doing stuff. The WWP is not a large group - but they get a lot done because they go out and do things instead of sitting around bullshitting. I think people here are bitter they can't replace David Corn appearing on "The O'Reilly Factor" so that Fox News viewers could be informed that the anti-war demonstrations were all being run by commies.
In a just world, white liberal yuppies would have to go to North Korea, Cuba, Guatemala, Colombia, Palestine and so forth and get down on their knees and beg the workers there for forgiveness for what they and their government have been doing to them. I'm sure the Rothschild's usury in Europe had negative effects on the borrowers, but I wouldn't feel pleasant sitting among the Nazi high command and looking for the speck in the Jews, or the Russians eyes during the 1930s. While you white yuppie liberals and "progressives" sit around wringing your hands about the WWP and North Korea, I'm going to go down and help them in their solidarity efforts to Colombia and other places. You can sit on your asses and wring your hands and go on Fox News and criticize the people out doing something.
Lance
===================
C'mon, admit it; that tantrum of pontificating righteousness felt good, didn't it?!?!?!?
Since you have *no* idea what people on this list do when they're not on the list you are in *no* position to *sit on your own yuppie ass* and whine about discussions/opinions that differ from your own.
Frankly, I couldn't give a hoot about Lenin or Corn or the WWP or O'Reilly, but having a demo a week or a month ain't a strategy and neither is Activistism as Doug, Liza and Christian Parenti pointed out not too long ago.
Ian