I don't think Wei or JB understand that I am fully aware of,
and fully opposed to, all the crimes and offenses of our government
and its officials, against our own peaceful citizens and innocents
abroad.  I do not condone them, and I wish I could punish the bastards
personally.  But for me, all these crimes do not "constitute" America.
Over the span I've lived, I've seen, in addition to the evils,
considerable social improvement in this country.  Unlike your
totalizing PC moralists, I have faith in the evolving American
conscience.  In the same way, I abhor the evil Pound has spouted,
but his great contributions to American literature came from the
uninfected portions of his brain.

==DP

At 08:59 AM 8/13/00 GMT, you wrote:
>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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