Heh, well to hear some tell it there are no good twins of Michael Pugliese...why fs accuses him of being a former member of the Nazi Party ;-)
I met Michnik at a conference organized by Socialist Review and the Community Studies and Sociology Depts. of UC, Santa Cruz on New Social Movements in the early 90's. Best papers were those presented by Stuart Hall, Alberto Melucci, Barbara Epstein, Rebecca Klatch and Osha Neumann, "Motherfuckers Then and Now: My Sixties Problem." The San Francisco housemates I travelled down to Santa Cruz were predictably late in waking up so I missed this paper, "The Uses of Freedom: Post-Communist Transformation in Eastern Europe, " by Bronislaw Misztal who was probably the fellow who transllated for Michnik. Papers collected here, http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/1140_reg_print.html Michnik was clearly bemused by the atmosphere and general political tone of the conf.
http://www.dissentmagazine.org/menutest/articles/sp04/cushman.htm , "Anti-totalitarianism as a Vocation An Interview with Adam Michnik
by Thomas Cushman
Adam Michnik, a leading force in the Solidarity trade union movement, and the founder and editor of the largest Polish daily newspaper, Gazeta Wyborcza, was an outspoken supporter of the war in Iraq. In this interview, which occurred in Warsaw on January 15, 2004, Michnik clarifies his position on the war and discusses the responses of other European intellectuals.
Thomas Cushman: I'd like to focus on the response of Polish intellectuals and former anticommunists and activists to the war in Iraq, Polish relations with America more generally, and how the latter have affected relations between Poland and other European countries, especially those that were against the war. I am an American liberal who supported the war in Iraq on humanitarian grounds. It's somewhat difficult to find such people in the United States, so I've had to come all the way to Poland to find liberals who support the war. In your essay "A View from the Left: We the Traitors" (Gazeta Wyborcza, May 29, 2003, and in English in World Press Review, June 2003), you took a very strong position of support for the war in Iraq and noted that you share that position with other former dissidents. Could you explain this in more detail? <SNIP>
More of the same, http://www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10415.html Edited by Thomas Cushman A Matter of Principle: Humanitarian Arguments for War in Iraq
New journal presenting the same set of political views but, having a much broader (can't see that Frances Fox-Piven agrees, for example, in the main, or its specifics, or Stephen Eric Bronner, of Logos and New Politics, editor of this new book, "Blood in the Sand: Imperial Fantasies, Right-Wing Ambitions, and the Erosion of American Democracy.") , more pluralistic, contentious set of contributing editors, http://www.democratiya.com/editors.asp http://www.democratiya.com/default.asp
Finally, far from Michnik's current set of positions on "anti-globalization, " and generally far to his left, but, sharing points of congruence on Saddam Hussein's tyranny the , "Iraqi Resistance, " and other anti-imperialist formations like the PFLP and the the pro-Syrian Ba'athist , "Lebanese Resistance, " and Arab dictactorships see the new book by Mark LeVine, that I drew attn. to last night. Philion esp. should read it.Mike Davis, Joel Beinin and Chris Toensing of MERIP, disagree, it appears with his silly refusal to admit any human rights abuses by the Ba'athists and thus cede as LeVine, who has appear on The O'Reilly Factor and is subject to recurrent scurrilous attack on Frontpage, says in the text, issues of democratization and development in the MENA to , "Fox and the neo-cons."