Once again I wish to praise JB for his insightful and very necessary remarks
on the issue of political correctness and the jailed demonstrators.

I concur with his stance, almost to the letter.

He wrote:



<<it would be much more interesting if DP would spell out what he thinks the
excesses of the left (in america, since we're addressing PC) are?
destruction of public property at the Republican Convention?  how about the
destruction of human beings that results from the policies that result from
that convention?  how about the fact that the deal is so rigged,
politically, that normal political protests are, in the face of the billions
of dollars arrayed against them, ineffectual?  >>

This is exactly on the mark.  I think those who wish to form opinions about
the demonstrators should have a better understanding of what they are
protesting against.  For instance, they are against the sending of over 1.3
Billion dollars of military aid to Colombia to fight a "drug war" which has
been a complete fiasco, aid which will be given to a Mafia-ocracy, which has
the worst human rights record in the hemisphere.  They are against the
control of our political system by such interests as the military industrial
complex, the insurance industry, the brokerage firms, the oil companies, the
banks, and an entrenched financial oligarchy which would deny to US citizens
the benefits of universal health care, a liveable wage, reduced working
hours (comensurate with the increase in liesure time which should be
afforded by advances in technology), and a share of the profits created by
their labor (the vast majority of which is going to the top 5 percent)


<<one wonders where DP has been all of his
life -- doesn't he remember the *illegal* protests of the 50's & 60's during
the civil rights and the antiwar actions?  then, also, we heard from the
respectable class that *there is never any excuse for breaking the law* in
the same moral tone that DP uses.>>

Yes.  DP wants to assume that such protestors are "guilty" of some crime
without investigating the facts.  I wonder why he did not say that POLICE
who are guilty of abuse, or unnecessary violence should be jailed.  As the
lawyer of John Seller said in press conference:  not a single Police officer
in Philadelphia has been charged by the DA for violence against citizens,
despite reams of evidence that such crimes have been committed by police
officers.  Nor does the mainstream press report the crimes committed by
police against demonstrators, most of them PEACEFUL.  I was  present in the
DC demonstrations, and know a number of bystanders who were jailed on
pretexts, without even the minimal respect for constitutional rights.

Visit:  www.indymedia.org

Don't just buy the mainstream media reports.



<<well, old DP may think his friend's
*bright son* deserves a week in jail, but I sure as hell don't, just as I
don't think that numerous friends of mine deserved years in prison for
throwing blood on murderers, or scratching nuclear missiles with
screwdrivers, >>

Well said.  Someone very recently got five years for throwiing a bucket of
blood on a newly completed submarine.  Insane!!!

<<just as I don't think that the protesters in Philadelphia
deserved to be beaten and sexually molested by the police....>>

Yes there is a report of rape by the police, and of numerous threats of
rape.

<<or held in jail under high bonds (as high as a million dollars) after
being charged with
felonies for misdemeanor offenses.>>

Yes.  John Seller has been charged with such items as "failure to disperse,"
"obstructing a public space", "disorderly conduct" , and "conspiracy".  He
is being kept in jail, because he is one of leaders of the Ruckus Society,
and they don't want him in Los Angeles right now.  Yet he has Never been
charged with any crime resulting in harm to any person, or damage to any
property.

So we might ask DP, why he has such trust for the police.  Are they
protecting a social class, or a political policy that he finds inherently
admirable, and if so, why does he find the Republican party so deserving of
protection.  A non-violent blockade of delegates trying to enter the
Convention suggests a highly enlightened approach to making the point the
way Gandhi and Martin Luther King would make it:  Entrenched elites should
not be allowed to convene a demi-coronation (Bush:  "I am a demi-god, my
father says so.); nor should the compliant and complicit media broadcast
such a farce as if it really had anything to do with genuine democracy.

  <<<come on, DP, give us your list of
*leftist* excesses.>>


I would also like to see the list of excesses too.  Perhaps it might include
the broadcast of Abu Mumia Jamal's taped words on too many college campuses
over the last two years.  Or the refusal of some college campuses to fund
right wing Christian group's publications (as if they don't have funds in
abundance elsewhere). What is the PC issue which people on this list claim
is so urgent, and yet refuse to mention.  Maybe a Fundamentalist professor
was denied tenure?

I know of some Stalinists in a New York housing collective, who socially
shunned and spoke rudely to a resident Trotskyist.  Maybe this is the kind
of excess we are to address.

What is the issue??!!

(At the risk of causing offense, I cannot help but ask,where would Pound be,
with regard to the demonstrators in Philly and LA?  Would he be with
Buchanan in Long Beach, or with the Fascist Party Convention, wherever and
whenever that is being held?  Maybe he would be in Austria, writing Odes to
the fascist "Freedom Party").


--Wei




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