[extropy-chat] WWP

[Samantha Atkins]

Baathists were a relatively weak group until we forced them into  
power in Iraq.  bit afaik Baathists are no more uniformly evil than  
the other sects at play.


I really don't care a lot if some of the groups organizing protesters  
are not very nice folks if the people themselves will get off their  
duff and speak up.

The FBI considers people who take the Constitution seriously as  
likely terrorists so excuse me if I am not too impressed with a claim  
that they consider the WWP to be terrorists.

There are no scare quotes around anti-war protest.

Look at the thugs you are pandering for Mike.

- samantha

On Jul 10, 2005, at 11:09 AM, Mike Lorrey wrote:

>
>
> --- Dirk Bruere <dirk at neopax.com> wrote:
>
>
>> Mike Lorrey wrote:
>>
>>
>>> WWP and several of these other groups accepted, prior to the Iraq
>>>
>> war,
>>
>>> significant sums from Saddam Hussein, according to records captured
>>>
>> in
>>
>>> Bagdad. Whether they continue to receive funds from the Baathist
>>>
>> Party
>>
>>> in Syria, as is suspected, has not yet been confirmed.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> Well, better just ask the CIA who can be relied upon to provide
>> truthful answers to all such question. NOT.
>> Would these be the same records that smeared George Galloway?
>> Your naivete is touching.
>>
>
> Your excuse making for stalinists and baathists is revealing. It also
> displays ignorance and naivete of the international left and its
> agenda. Domestic revolutionary and insurgency groups come under the
> surveillance of the FBI's Department 5, not the CIA.
>
> http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=370660
>
> http://caosblog.com/archives/803
>
> "The FBI considers the WWP a terrorist organization. On May 10, 2001,
> FBI Director Louis Freeh stated that “Anarchists and extremist
> socialist groups — many of which, such as the Workers World Party,  
> have
> an international presence and, at times, also represent a potential
> threat in the United States.” Imagine that; the mainstream media
> somehow missed the fact that the most ubiquitous organizer of
> “anti-war” protests is directed by a terrorist support group.  
> Shouldn’t
> a question on this front be aimed directly at Ramsey Clark at one of
> his regular press conferences?
>
> The Korean Truth Commission and Pastors for Peace are staunch  
> allies of
> Kim Jong Il and Fidel Castro, respectively, and both groups  
> continue to
> support these murderous regimes’ violation of International law. In
> addition to its role as a front for the support of
> totalitarian/communist governments in North Korea and Cuba, members of
> ANSWER’s steering committee such as the Muslim Student Association and
> the Free Palestine Alliance continue to provide ideological,  
> logistical
> and financial support for organizations devoted to the destruction of
> the state of Israel, including the terrorist group, Hamas. A
> comprehensive investigation of the members of ANSWER’s steering
> committee make it clear that the organization is in actuality one of
> Peace’s greatest enemies. "
>
> This isn't the first time the WWP has pandered for overseas thugs.  
> They
> also accepted funds and lobbied for former Yugoslav President Slobodan
> Milosevich. Ramsey Clark served as legal counsel in the US for Saddam
> Hussein. The WWP also runs the KTC, the Korea Truth Commission, a  
> front
> for North Korean thug-in-chief Kim Jong Il.
>
> http://www.brookesnews.com/031502peacerally.html
> http://www.capmag.com/article.asp?ID=2592
> http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2005/02/310163.shtml
> http://www.infoshop.org/texts/wwp.html
> http://frontpagemag.com/Articles/ReadArticle.asp?ID=5734
> http://www.leftwatch.com/archives/years/2005/000001.html
> http://www.insightmag.com/main.cfm?include=detail&storyid=370637
>
> "The IAC has felt the sting. In a statement it blasted those who
> "dishonestly claim that ANSWER is a 'front' group in order to diminish
> the coalition," though it acknowledges "the presence of socialists and
> Marxists, in particular members of the Workers World Party." Their
> critics, IAC says, are racists: "Those who claim that ANSWER is a
> 'front' organization demonstrate their own racist and elitist
> perception of reality."
>
> And ANSWER has ripped what it calls "a repugnant red-baiting campaign
> against the ANSWER coalition because of its role as a principal
> organizer of the mass grass-roots movement of opposition to war
> throughout the United States."
>
> The WWP is nothing if not consistent. According to a 1974  
> congressional
> report, it split from the Socialist Workers Party in 1959 in a dispute
> over the Soviet invasion of Hungary three years before. The Socialist
> Workers opposed the invasion, while Workers World partisans supported
> it. "In 1968, the Workers World Party supported the invasion of
> Czechoslovakia by the communist Warsaw Pact armies," the report
> continued. The party, which never numbered more than a few hundred
> people, supported the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese army against the
> United States during the Vietnam War, according to the congressional
> report. Some of its activities were coordinated with enemy military
> actions. An April 8, 1972, internal letter "To All Branches" of the
> party urged participation in "antiwar" demonstrations in support of a
> Viet Cong offensive in South Vietnam. The letter's author, John
> Catalinotto, remains in the party as managing editor of its weekly
> Workers World "newspaper," and occasionally represents the IAC.
>
> Party members received revolutionary training in Cuba as members of  
> the
> Venceremos Brigades in the 1960s and early 1970s, and at about that
> time the party oriented itself ideologically with North Korea. Deirdre
> Griswold Stapp, a voice of the party and currently editor of Workers
> World, described how the party functioned in a 1972 report to the  
> Cuban
> Communist Party. Explaining its "international relationships," she  
> told
> Cuban leaders about the WWP's new contacts with North Korea, via a
> front group called the American Servicemen's Union, according to
> congressional investigators. "The chairman of the American  
> Servicemen's
> Union, Andy Stapp, recently visited the Democratic People's  
> Republic of
> Korea and opened friendly discussions with the party there," she  
> wrote.
> She later married Stapp.
>
> In a speech to the 6th Congress of the League of Socialist Working
> Youth of Korea, the youth branch of North Korea's ruling party, Andy
> Stapp praised "Comrade Kim Il-sung, ever victorious, iron-willed,
> brilliant commander and outstanding leader of the international
> communist and working-class movements," according to a transcript
> published in a congressional report. "As instructed by Marshal Kim
> Il-sung, the outstanding leader of the international and working-class
> movements, the No. 1 target of all the revolutionary people in the
> world is U.S. imperialism. In order to avenge the many oppressed  
> people
> who have died a bloody death, and in order to build a new society in
> America in which everyone enjoys happiness, as in Korea, I recognize
> the great juche idea of Marshal Kim Il-sung as the Marxism-Leninism of
> the present time."
>
> Stapp committed himself and his organization to armed violence and to
> promoting mutiny within the U.S. military. According to the transcript
> of his speech broadcast over Radio Pyongyang, Stapp stated, "The
> American Servicemen's Union will study as documents, that must be  
> read,
> the works of genius of Marshal Kim Il-sung. ... With the juche idea as
> the guiding compass of struggle, we will consolidate the branches of
> the American Servicemen's Union in order to rally more soldiers around
> the organization. In this way the American GIs will fight against  
> their
> real enemies, against the policy of aggression and war enforced on  
> them
> by the U.S. ruling circles and the fascist military officers."
>
> He added that his goal was "to build a powerful American Servicemen's
> Union that will turn the guns against their fascist officers. ... If
> the American Servicemen's Union cuts the windpipe of U.S. imperialism
> inside the army while at the same time it is mutilated in all parts of
> the world, U.S. imperialism will surely perish forever."
>
> Today, the WWP and its fronts claim to be nonviolent, but they remain
> as enthusiastic as ever about North Korea. Visiting Pyongyang to
> celebrate the 90th anniversary of the birth of Kim Il-sung in April
> 2002, Griswold Stapp signed a statement denouncing President George W.
> Bush's "notorious antiterrorism war" and demanding that "the Korean
> peninsula be reunified without fail under the wise leadership of the
> respected leader Kim Jong-il following the banner of the Three  
> Charters
> for the national reunification set forth by the great President Kim
> Il-sung." Filing an article from the North Korean capital for the July
> 23, 2002, issue of Workers World, Griswold Stapp called Pyongyang
> "truly one of the most beautiful cities in the world."
>
> Brian Becker, a WWP secretariat member and a director of ANSWER and  
> the
> IAC, visited North Korea in March 2002 to denounce the United States,
> discredit the presence of U.S. troops in South Korea and reaffirm a
> commitment to reunify the divided peninsula along the lines of the  
> plan
> set by Kim Jong-il. Becker serves as a spokesman for the IAC and its
> antiwar campaign.
>
> The second major coordinating faction of the present-day antiwar
> movement, headed by UPJ under Leslie Cagan's leadership, has its roots
> in the old Soviet "active-measures" agitprop networks, say
> homeland-security experts.
>
> Insight has traced Cagan's career to Cuba, where in the early 1970s as
> a member of the Venceremos Brigades she received revolutionary  
> training
> and indoctrination. In the last years of the Cold War, Cagan organized
> mass protests from an office called Mobilization for Survival,
> according to former congressional investigators. She coordinated with
> Soviet international front organizations and the CPUSA as the vanguard
> element of broader-based demonstrations around the world against U.S.
> resistance to Soviet expansion. This magazine has obtained  
> Mobilization
> for Survival documents from the 1980s that show the group's support  
> for
> Marxist-Leninist insurgencies and terrorist groups in the Third World,
> Middle Eastern terrorists (including the Popular Front for the
> Liberation of Palestine), Soviet-backed dictatorships in Africa and
> Latin America, and Soviet-inspired campaigns for the unilateral
> disarmament of the United States.
>
> In 1990-91, when the United States led an international coalition to
> free Kuwait from the Iraqi military, Cagan coordinated the National
> Campaign for Peace in the Middle East to organize grass-roots
> opposition to the liberation. Also in 1991, when the CPUSA broke into
> two factions, Cagan cofounded the splinter group, called the  
> Committees
> of Correspondence. Now she runs the UPJ, coordinating opposition to  
> the
> war on terrorism in general and the effort to destroy Saddam's arsenal
> of weapons of mass destruction.
>
> Meanwhile, longtime Cagan associate Michael Meyerson is helping to run
> protests in New York, according to the Associated Press. Formerly a
> member of the national council or "Politburo" of the CPUSA, Meyerson
> has been involved in protests since at least 1960. It was Meyerson  
> who,
> in a 1965 visit to Hanoi, was made an "honorary nephew" of North
> Vietnamese Communist Party leader Ho Chi Minh. He returned home to
> attend "antiwar" protests sporting a Viet Cong cap and the ring he
> famously said was made from the wreckage of an American fighter plane.
> He ran the U.S. Peace Council, the New York-based branch of the World
> Peace Council, a Soviet international front organization that,
> according to 1982 CIA and FBI testimony before the House Permanent
> Select Committee on Intelligence, received covert funding and  
> direction
> from the KGB. "
>
>
>
> Mike Lorrey
> Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
> "Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
> It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
>                                       -William Pitt (1759-1806)
> Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com
>
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