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On Apr 9, 2011, at 8:01 AM, Louis Proyect <l...@panix.com> wrote: > > > On 4/8/11 9:24 PM, Lou Paulsen wrote: >> >> >> Well, Libya is not the whole Arab world. We have made our views clear >> about opposing abuses particularly in those parts of the Arab world >> where the oppressors have been the proxies of US imperialism. > > Sorry, I should have been clearer. I was referring strictly to the "axis of > good" countries like Libya and Syria. We must assume that in those places > torture, etc. is okay because the State Department has opposed the heads of > state. No, to make the point again, it's not that torture is good when countries that are targeted by the state department do it. It's that it's bad AND OUR RESPONSIBILITY when tools of the United States do it. > >> 's > Yes, you are the mirror image of the bourgeois press. They leave out all the > positive gains of North Korean society while you leave out all the bad things > (family dynasty, cult of the leader, police state, etc.) If that's your > thing... > If those two were the choices, I would much rather be the "mirror image" as you have described it than a "mirror site" for the bourgeois media. Again, what is the point? What diseases or delusions in the working class and the progressive movement are we supposed to be opposing here? Gadhafi and Kim have not set up internationals. We do not run into their followers everywhere. But on the contrary, there are millions of workers who support imperialist war against them, while believing that the US armed forces are a "global force for good"* against their evil, and many in the progressive movement who are truly equivocal about it. Those people are our responsibility to engage with our press. I view the socialist press as a practical operation, like the practice of medicine, rather than an artistic function like a journal of poetry or film criticism. Suppose we were producing a journal for the use of health care providers in the poor areas of the US. Someone complains that we haven't run any articles attacking schistosomiasis. We explain that we don't get so much of it in our service areas, and we get told that we must think schistosomiasis is a good disease! >> >> Until we turn our own situation around here, innumerable deaths and >> unmeasurable crimes are going to take place. So how are we actually >> going to most effectively use our resources to bring more freedom to >> the Arab world? > > I believe the revolutionary movement has to engage in ruthless criticism of > every police state in the world, as well as bourgeois democracies. If I was > editor of Workers World newspaper, I would have be exposing the ANC > government early on. (etc) > Fortunately there is a left paper which is always ready to ruthlessly criticize every government or socialist or nationalist or class-collaborationist force in the world, regardless of whether it makes any practical sense: Workers' Vanguard. I don't know if they accept cold resumes, but you might give it a shot. They are a great example of another tradition that we are intent on distinguishing ourselves from. What do you think are the practical bad results of editing our press our way, and not your way? If we were under the delusion (which I sometimes think affects the people at Workers Vanguard) that the workers in Libya, North Korea, and South Africa were relying on our website for information about their countries, and for tactical guidance, I would favor our editors taking that into consideration. Lou Paulsen Member, WWP ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: Marxism@greenhouse.economics.utah.edu Set your options at: http://greenhouse.economics.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
