On Thu, 19 May 2005 07:30:43 -0600, "Michael Pugliese"
<michael.098762001 at gmail.com> said:
> On 5/19/05, Etienne <tim_boetie at fastmail.fm> wrote:Unlike, say, the
> allegations that the WRP used to
> > send details of Iraqi dissidents to Saddam,
>
> The took photos of Iraqi exile Communists demonstrating outside
> the Iraqi Embassy and gave them to the Ba'athists. Doubtless ending in
> a trip never to return by family members in Iraq to Abu Ghareb.
Yes, I know, that's why I mentioned it (well, I know this is the allegation made about the WRP - I haven't looked into whether it's true or not, what with the WRP falling apart twenty years ago or something).
> Final point for the morning, to reinforce, the public face of the
> anti-war Movement insofar as it is hegemonized by retrograde forces,
> and not groups and individuals that have a clear, consistant pov
> against Ba'athist, anti-communist thuggery, will continue to decline
> into irrelevence at the same time as te war becomes more and more
> unpopular.
Yes - but the way to show that the anti-war movement is better than the retrograde forces isn't to line up with the pro-war side currently flinging shit at Galloway; to do so simply strengthens their attack on the left. It's a little pathetic to see people pleading before them - 'Please sir, I'm not like Galloway, I'm a nice, decent leftist'; we're never going to be absolved by their all-to-real tribunals (see http://barmecides.blogspot.com/2005/02/case-closed.html ).
The way to win is to make our criticism of the war _more visible_ than the criticisms thrown at us (and Galloway is one of us, even if you don't like him); struggling to distance ourselves from those criticised does the opposite. If we can't persuade a majority of people that the deaths at the hands of the coalition in Iraq are more important than a bit of minor corruption, then we've lost. --
"The bourgeois want art voluptuous and life ascetic; the
reverse would be better."
-- Adorno Tim http://www.huh.34sp.com/