What Does It Mean?

What does this weird expression on his face mean?



The author of the best version gets an award. :)

Democracy and the Euston Manifesto

So you don't have to spend as much time as I did studying this roll of toilet paper, I'm now going to review and summarize the Euston Manifesto for anyone who hasn't yet read it. I'm sorry that I cannot include the entire thing as I planned, but it's apparently under copyright protection (talk about freedom) and I don't want some asswipe complaining to me about it. One has to wonder how such a thing could ever become so popular. Well, after reading it the answer is quite clear. It follows the same liberal practices of criticizing the wrongs of society and its current government while attaching a "with all due respect, that is, my Lords" to the end for safety before sitting back down and continuing the act of complicity. It's similar to a child shouting for a toy in the store in the lowest possible whisper and then bowing to its parents and conceding that it doesn't in fact need or really want the toy, but felt it absolutely had to speak up about it:

The Preamble

The interesting thing about the opening statements are that they surprisingly contain the most accurate declarations about leftists and liberals.

Indeed, the reconfiguration of progressive opinion that we aim for involves drawing a line between the forces of the Left that remain true to its authentic values, and currents that have lately shown themselves rather too flexible about these values.

As we will see, this isn't accurate in the sense that the drafters believe it is. Rather, it's completely spot-on in a reflexively ironic sense. The intention of this statement is to separate those leftists who quickly abandon what leftism is supposed to be about when it becomes favorable politically or economically. Perhaps to the dismay of the Euston group who are using here to attack other types of opportunism, just about every "Labour Party" or social democratic organization in history is a good example. In fact, one could extend this attack to practically every political party in history, as the necessity of staying in power once you're there makes a political organism chew its own leg off to escape the trap of democratic uncertainty. Where this statement strays from reality is in precisely which group of people the authors are discussing. As is clear from reading the rest of the manifesto, they are talking about those on the left who betray the concepts of democracy, rational, open discussion on all topics, and a firm grounding in reality. As the manifesto's body gains a fuller anatomy, we see this exact betrayal occurring in the Euston group's own positions on several topics.

The preamble also goes on to talk about the need for a wider range of opinion in mainstream media and discussion, and how most of the serious global issues are only discussed on the Internet because of the nature (my words, not theirs) of non-independent information outlets.

Statement of principles

For democracy. - Basically a rehashing of the US' first amendment. Nothing particularly good or bad said here that isn't said already. Pay attention, however, to the call for "separation of state and religion." It will be funny later, I promise.

No apology for tyranny. - They refuse to "indulgently 'understand'" (their quote, not mine) anti-democratic regimes that oppress their people, and distance themselves from "left-liberal voices...quick to offer an apologetic explanation" for these types of governments. This begs the question what makes a regime, what makes it anti-democratic, and what constitutes oppression. Every country in the history of the world is subject to at least one of those accusations. The intent here was obviously a reference to Stalin and friends, or those that argue that things are worse off in Iraq under Bush than under Hussein. But it could fairly apply to anyone because of the vagueness it is mired in and depending entirely on the definition and interpretation of "anti-democratic regime" and "oppression." Was the Alien and Sedition Act anti-democratic and oppressive? To me it was. I guess that means anyone who tries to understand or defend John Adams is a freedom-hating thug according to the Euston Manifesto.

Human rights for all. - Once again, nothing original but keep in mind the position of the paper for later amusement and tragedy.

Equality. - Argues for democratic trade unions, gender equality, etc.

Development for freedom. - Envisioning a kinder, friendlier globalization.

Opposing anti-Americanism. - Remember when I said you'd have a laugh? Here we are halfway through the declarations, with one explicity denouncing people who justify anti-democratic regimes that oppress their own people, and now we have the Euston group spewing bullshit like, "That US foreign policy has often opposed progressive movements and governments and supported regressive and authoritarian ones does not justify generalized prejudice against either the country or its people." Too true, one shouldn't wantonly hate the citizens of any nation just because most of them are kept ignorant of all the criminally terrible actions of its government. However, notice the careful wording of the "No apology for tyranny" declaration juxtaposed with this one. I guess because the US has only systematically oppressed and destroyed democracy (through assassinations, coups, spending millions on right-wing paramilitary groups, etc.) in other countries, it gets off scot-free under criticisms of anti-democratic regimes that oppress their own people. Unless of course you consider keeping a population of nearly 300 million people as stupid as fucking possible a method of oppression.

For a two-state solution. - Advocates allowing both Palestinians and Israelis to have their own countries.

Against racism - Vaguely asserts that some people on the left are only claiming to be against the crimes of Israeli settlers against the people who were living there before as a cover for their secret hatred of Jews. I don't know specifically who this is referring to, other than perhaps certain world leaders, but then I wouldn't exactly call them part of the "left and liberal circles." Ahmadinejad is in more of an Octagon than a circle. By the way, remember when I told you to hold in the laughs until later? The concept of Zionism, that is, the belief that Israel belongs to the Jewish people for Biblical reasons and that they should have a nation to call their own that will always be a safe place for them to flee to when other countries are hostile towards them, seems remarkably at odds to me with calling for a "separation of state and religion" as the manifesto did earlier. Israel is in fact little more than a theocracy, albeit a much more pluralistic one than, say, Iran or the Vatican.

United against terror. - More of the same stuff. Sort of a time-placement-device required by history much like a "committed to fighting global Communism" statement a liberal manifesto would contain during the Cold War.

A new internationalism. - Look out, Coalition of the Willing: your burden of proof just got a few milligrams heavier.

A critical openness. - Basically tells leftists not to cooperate with anti-democratic movements, people who defend Stalin and Mao, and so on. This is what the preamble was hinting at. Note that it's ok to cooperate with liberals that defend the shitty, anti-democratic governments in the US, UK, et al. because they at least give the illusion that your vote means anything.

Historical truth. - Stop lying about stuff that happened to score points for your agenda. Not a bad statement.

Freedom of ideas. - Freedom of speech unless it defames someone, is libelous, or incites others to violence. I believe under this definition most of the literature preceding the liberal revolutions of the Enlightment and thereafter would be impossible. "Shut up, Thomas Jefferson! We're trying to have a Food Not Muskets meeting! Nobody wants to hear your terrorist concepts of how to change society for the betterment of the small merchant class!"

Open source. - Perhaps the weirdest part of the manifesto. Discusses patents and open source software. Not opposed to its ideas, just not really sure why it's in here.

A precious heritage. - Eurocentric world-view stuff. Praises the "democratic revolutions of the eighteenth century" and ignores all the attempts at democratic revolutions in the "Danger! Brown People Crossing" regions that have been suppressed and replaced with dictatorships and cruel authoritarians by the democratic societies of Europe and the US for the benefit of the businesses they serve.

Elaborations - In a nutshell: Attacks anyone criticizing a government if it is considered "democratic," concedes democracies have problems too but downplays them; pays lip service to poverty but distances itself from authoritarian leftists; attacks people who say the US deserved 9/11 or that it was understandable from a global foreign policy perspective and puts all the blame on crazy Islamic nutjobs; makes vague statements about how the war in Iraq was either good or bad depending on how you look at it; attacks leftists who criticize the governments who supported invading Iraq while not criticizing "the ugly forces of the Iraqi 'insurgency'"; more stuff about European anti-Semitic vandalism and violence, and anti-Zionist intellectuals all being secret Jew haters with no plausible qualms against Israel; one sentence about Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo with a minute mention of the extraordinary renditions by the CIA and then a large paragraph about leftists and groups like Amnesty International criticizing the human rights violations at these places and daring to compare them to Soviet Gulags. They're right. I'm fairly certain nobody had a digital camera in the gulags to take photos while the soldiers raped and humiliated the prisoners and made them smear shit all over themselves. And it's hard to get someone with a dog eating their genitals to hold still for one of those old-timey cameras with gunpowder flashes.

Conclusion - The author(s) bravely take back the word liberal from those who usurp it by dominating every conversation and movement with talk of anti-imperialism or anti-Bushism.

My conclusions: weak, afraid to be confrontational or express concrete solutions, apologetic while denouncing apologism, a desire to be overly polite and civil in matters where people's lives are at stake because it makes them seem more rational and intelligent than the rabble...am I talking about the Euston Manifesto or the stereotype of liberals in general? One gets the feeling from reading this thing that the pub they supposedly formulated it in was serving brandy snifters and broadcasting the explosively radical programmes of BBC4.

The problem with liberalism in general is not its ideas of freedom or reason, but that it is too comfortable with its own living situation to ever take those ideas to the limits of their potential. If the government commits an injustice, it's not the government itself to blame but the party in charge. So you vote in a new party. If that party screws you over, the solution is to wait patiently till the next election and vote someone else in. And so on and so on. Anyone who dares to say the system itself is the cause of the problems is written off as insane and ignored, despite the liberals own claims to love and protect freedom of speech and the open discourse of all ideas. This love turns tough when the convenience and comfort the liberal enjoys is ever threatened in any serious way.

We are partisans of these values. But we are not zealots. For we embrace also the values of free enquiry, open dialogue and creative doubt, of care in judgement and a sense of the intractabilities of the world. We stand against all claims to a total — unquestionable or unquestioning — truth.

...except of course, the unquestionable truth of parliamentary government with a judicial, legislative, and executive branch with pluralist treatment of political parties as set out in the beginning of the manifesto. In other words, the current system of government found in the UK, US, and most of the rest of the world is the end of all human political development and achievement and nothing exists beyond it that is worth looking into. That is the philosophy of the liberal which disgusts me most, for it not only refuses to acknowledge the inherently anti-democratic nature of such hierarchal, easily and inevitably corruptible power, but goes a step further in considering it the magic solution to all of the world's woes when it has, historically, been either the cause of them, or in conjunction with greed, the means with which to cause them. Give me a manifesto which says "No one is more or less powerful than anyone else" and I'll give you something that truly celebrates a love for democracy. Better yet, I'll write it myself right now:

The Ghostzart Manifesto of Democracy

Preamble

In our current society, there are some who have and some who do not have. In capitalist societies those who have are the wealthy that enjoy the fruits of others' labor, the politicians and judges that they eat dinner with, and the plethora of small peanuts managers who do all of the real supervisory work for them. Everyone else gets the stones and the peels. In so-called socialist or communist societies, those who have are the bureaucrats and state loyalists that slime their way up the ladder in a way not entirely different from the capitalist managers. In fact, the biggest problem with statist control of capital is not that it is too socialist, as some liberals accuse, but that it is the absurd extreme of capitalist monopoly, where everything is owned by one board of executives and there exists no means to recuse oneself from participation save running away, being imprisoned, or the coffin. The biggest problem with these two systems in respect to democracy is that they cripple and tear away its foundations at every turn.

Statement of principles

A. Individual rights

Every person who lives in a particular place must, due to the necessity of having a social harmony in order to maximize the happiness of all, sometimes compromise his/her own freedoms for the sake of everyone's shared freedoms. One person may wish to have the freedom to murder his neighbors and consider any attempt at preventing him from doing so as an invasion of his will. He is right, of course, but his neighbors would consider their freedom to continue living equally if not more important. Therefore a democracy must find a balance when making decisions between the will of the individual versus the will of society. A society which legalizes murder will probably find itself without citizens very soon, as most will either pack up and leave or end up being killed. While this sounds absurd, it serves to point out that some rights can be ascertained as "natural" (for lack of a better word) and necessary. It is a matter for discussion which of these should be crystallized and protected in the future and which should be left to individual societies to decide upon. But for the most part, they can be safely agreed to contain: the right to live, the right to believe anything and express those beliefs, the right to move somewhere else, the right to work, and the right to refuse to work. All in all, one can sum basic human rights up with: "What I do that harms no one else directly or indirectly is entirely my own affair. What I do that harms one directly or indirectly is not automatically right or wrong, but depends upon the circumstances and the prevailing notion of ethics in my time and location, and thus is subject to public discussion and equal consideration of different viewpoints."

B. A real democracy

A real democracy is not something to be found in the governments of the world. At best, a representative government serves some of its constituents some of the time, and more normally it serves a few of its constituents rarely--usually right before the next election. A true democratic society would put all of the decision-making power back into the hands of the public itself rather than depend on the honesty of a group of people who have not historically been the most honest of society. While pretending to depend on and serve the will of the majority, republics and parliamentary systems do little more than show contempt for the masses by removing any ability to make decisions from those who these decisions affect the most. If the will of the public is to be served, why not put the decision-making into their hands directly? If the reason is that the will of the public is untrustworthy and illegitimate because it sways and changes rapidly and needs a republic to provide stability, what argument can be given to legitimize the officials the public chooses? It is as if their ability to make decisions on who can tell them what to do is valid, but any attempts at making other decisions are invalid because they are too stupid to comprehend the issues they are deciding. Who then, I wonder, makes them this stupid in the first place?

C. An end to private/state capital

Not capital in the hands of the state supposedly made to serve the whole people, nor capital in the hands of a few made to serve nobody else but the owners. All capital in a given society belongs to the society as a whole, and when decision-making is put back into that social area then the development and use of that capital becomes part of the list of decisions. While capital is and ought to remain socially owned, the specific implementation of resources is up to the particular society and should be determined by what is fairest to the society and its workers, ecologically wisest, and most efficient for production and consumption rather than ideologically enforced. In any civilization where the productive capital of the people is allocated privately or by a government, democracy is undermined in favor of catering to those who the society considers "most important." Only when an abundance of wealth or higher position within a hierarchal rank is abolished will all citizens ever truly be equal to one another in respect to making decisions.

Conclusion

Capitalists, statists, and anyone in between can go fuck themselves. With all due respect, that is, my Lords.

Creative Acts of Warfare

The suicides of three detainees at the US base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, amount to acts of war, the US military says.

The camp commander said the two Saudis and a Yemeni were "committed" and had killed themselves in "an act of asymmetric warfare waged against us".

If killing yourself in a prison where you've never been brought to trial or told how long your sentence will be after 3+ years is an act of warfare, it's no wonder the war on terrorism is taking so long and yielding so few results. It's time the US got tough and declared a war on suicide. Do what the UK used to do and make attempted suicide a crime punishable by execution. That's the only way these "self terrorisers" are going to learn that if anyone is going to kill them, it's going to be someone else.

Hitler cat

There are more of Hitler cats here but this one is the most perfect. I saw this cat before I knew to what this page was dedicated and my first thought was "Hitler".

Friendy visits Vienna, Whoa! Mozart's Ghost visits Berlin

That's right. Last week our very own Masha came to visit Vienna. My wife and I showed her around the city and she took about 8 billion high-definition, super-gigantic photographs of everything. They will be up as soon as I can shrink them all down. There is also a video of me pretending to be overcome with grief at Falco's grave in Zentralfriedhof.

Then Friday I, the wife, and some others went to Berlin. We were at the fucking place where this crazy guy stabbed all those people and one ended up having HIV like 2 hours before it happened. Talk about in the nick of time. ...I'm going to Hell.

Bob Avakian - The L Ron Hubbard of American Maoism? (An Even Longer Countdown to Further Betrayal)

The Curious Counterpunch Article

In the June 2nd, 2006 online version of Counterpunch.org's newsletter appeared a more or less accurate warning from Sunsara Taylor about the futility of cooperating with mainstream, Democratic Party machinery and political groups to achieve the end to the war in Iraq, the growing amount of government intrusion into civil liberties, and the question of impeachment for George W Bush among other things. That is all well and good, and I find very little to disagree with in the author's essay about the uselessness of trusting the Democratic Party and its faithful liberal base to solve even one of these problems--especially when the Democrats have in reality been complicit in the creation of these problems since Day One. The article she wrote is entitled "Countdown to a Betrayal: Making Change Without Democrats" and can be found here: http://www.counterpunch.org/taylor06022006.html

However, as serious as the tone of the article was, I couldn't help at times from cracking a smile or forcing myself not to laugh as I read it. Not because I find things like warrantless wiretaps or waterboarding amusing, but because the author of this attack against torture, civilian spying, etc. is a member of the Revolutionary Communist Party USA, and also on the Advisory Board of World Can't Wait, the RCPUSA's fake anti-war group which exists solely to reel in fat little anti-war fish from the bigger streams. If you aren't familiar with the RCP, they are a self-described Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political party which grew out of the West Coast radical movements of the 60s and adopted tactics like infiltrating other left-wing groups' leadership to gain support, as opposed to the less-popular method among Leninists of actually openly stating up front what your plans for the future are and then waiting for the laughter to die down to take a vote.

This in itself wouldn't be so bad. After all, there are plenty of crazy, authoritarian hardcore leftist groups in the world--even ones who advocate Stalin-style dictatorship--and are rightly relegated by the public to the dumpster of insane garbage where they belong. What makes the whole thing hilarious, if not tragic, is their Dear Leader who the party refers to as, I kid you not, "Chairman Avakian." But rather than muse on what kind of sheer ego this guy has (or how poorly his title rolls off the tongue compared to something with more zazz, like "Chairman Mao" or "Uncle Joe")--if you're curious as to the fanatical devotion of the RCP to their glorious visionary just browse their online publication at http://www.rwor.org. It reads like any other "newspaper" with a cult head of state guiding it. Personally I wonder why they don't take it to the next step and highlight all of his quotes in red letters like in the Gospels. At least in this context the color choice would make more sense.

Returning to the article, and with all of this in mind, perhaps you can understand why I found passages like, "As for the war, the police-state spying, and the widespread networks of torture, Connecticut Democratic Senator Chris Dodd put it well when he described the Democrats' strategy not to run 'to the left of President Bush on national security but to the right.'" Thank goodness we have a group which defends Stalin and Mao to decry the horrors of police-state spying and widespread torture for us. Otherwise we might think a party that spends half its time glorifying those two would have no problem with such behavior.


A Broader Look at the RCP

In another article from RWOR, entitled "The Outrageous Equating of Communism with Nazism," is an introductory paragraph which states (text is reproduced exactly as published):

"One of the lies about communism that has been repeated over and over again is the equating of the Soviet Union under Stalin with Hitler’s Germany. The comparison rules socialism utterly out of order, paints it as a nightmare, rules it off the agenda.and is a total lie!"

This article, like the one by Taylor, is again more or less on-the-ball in its criticism that comparing Nazism to Communism is dishonest. Although not mentioned in the article, Hitler's Mein Kampf even goes to the trouble of declaring Communism one of his main targets for destruction. And the private sector of Germany in the 30s and 40s, while often forced to "support the war effort" and so on, was never controlled or regulated in what anyone but a pure laissez-faire supporter could fairly call an anti-capitalist way.

But an interesting after-effect of this article is not the valid point that hastily comparing one ideology to another is dishonest and pointlessly lumps two separate ideas together and thus poisons them both (whether or not they deserve to be poisoned is beyond the scope of the point I am attempting to make). No, the really interesting thing is to be found in the Taylor article and its support for something called "The Call." The Call is a formalized statement from the RCP front group World Can't Wait which Taylor's article suggests anyone seriously opposed to the war or the President should sign, encourage others to sign, and promote as publicly as possible. Included in The Call is this curiously funny statement:

"People look at all this and think of Hitler — and they are right to do so. The Bush regime is setting out to radically remake society very quickly, in a fascist way, and for generations to come. We must act now; the future is in the balance."

Oh, dear. What is this? An unfair comparison of two separate ideologies? Why, that almost seems intellectually dishonest to me. But then, I suppose it's all right to make unfair and false comparisons when they don't tarnish your side. Don't get me wrong, under the most liberal interpretation of the word "fascist," I consider Bush, Stalin, Mao and Hitler to be all pretty much good candidates for the distinction. But as much as I dislike George Bush and don't put it past him to, say, create a secret police force to whisk people off from their homes at night for making a joke at work about him, or have members of his own party killed for disagreeing with him (I don't put such abuses past anyone in a position of unchecked power, however), to his credit he's the only one on this list who hasn't done either of these things (yet).

A funny second point before I leave this article is this statement further down:

"With respect to the Jewish people, the revolution in power immediately took strong measures to combat and uproot anti-Semitism. Before the Bolshevik Revolution, Jews were subject to constant pogroms—mob massacres by peasants who were told absurd lies about the Jews. This was overthrown in the socialist revolution, and the confinement of Jews to certain geographic areas and discrimination in employment were ended."

Interestingly, my Russian friend's parents still have their old Soviet identification cards they were required to carry with them at all times that state, in clear terms, the fact they are Jews. These cards were used unofficially to curtail the number of Jewish citizens in the USSR who attempted to study stereotypically Jew-filled areas in the universities, such as medicine or law, presumably so that there would not be such a strong, how can I put it, Jewrageous flavor to these fields. Pop quiz: Which other leader required Jews to be properly identified as such in their government ID papers: a) George W Bush; or b) Adolf Hitler. If you answered B, you're correct. If you answered A, you're wrong, but possibly capable of reading Bush's innermost thoughts, and thus creeping me out beyond belief.

Before I get back to the broader look at the RCP, I want to spend a little more time focused on this "Call" I mentioned earlier. Taylor's article spends half its time praising the World Can't Wait movement (actually, the article is little more than a brief, pseudojournalistic criticism of the mainstream political movements with a predictable second-half advertisement for WCW and its Call), so it deserves a fair amount of attention:

"As the Call to Drive Out the Bush Regime says, 'There is not going to be some savior from the Democratic Party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into leaders' who tell us to seek common ground with fascists and religious fanatics is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people.' And this too has proven prescient and comes into sharper relief every day."

Personally as an anarchist I would have worded that paragraph to read, "There is not going to be some savior from any party. This whole idea of putting our hopes and energies into leaders [rest omitted] is proving every day to be a disaster, and actually serves to demobilize people." However historically more accurate my version might be than theirs, that would create a conflict with the RCP that secretly controls them through its control of World Can't Wait--control through a completely unelected group of "advisors" and "steering committee chairs" that are mostly RCP members, mind you. How the fuck Howard Zinn got on WCW is beyond my ability to comprehend.

"If the millions who are truly sickened by the direction of this regime could organize and start setting the dynamic, if people who feel this way begin acting in their masses, then a different future becomes possible."

I couldn't agree more. If only there were some way to motivate them to organize so they could replace our current system with something resembling a real democracy, but what does World Can't Wait suggest?

"World Can't Wait has issued a call for massive action on October 5."

Oh, more vanguardist bullshit leaking through the facade. Nevermind then. Masses, I am issuing a counter-call ordering you to go back home and wait for Playstation 3 to come out this autumn!

Here is perhaps my favorite paragraph from the article, if only because of the historical allegations of the RCP's anglo-centrism and homophobia (although, let's be fair, most early Marxists considered homosexuality to be a symptom of bourgeois decadence and a psychological disorder, so we can forgive them for being a little late in the race):

"Right now, there are young people, looking for a life that matters; immigrants, who have so bravely taken to the streets; women, and men, shocked to life by Alito and then South Dakota; Black people and others for whom the word 'Katrina' is still a raw wound; GI's who are sickened by the butchery they are being ordered to conduct. They are hanging out in gay bars and libraries, in movie theaters and on street corners, in huge cities and tiny towns, day labor corners, and yes, even mega-churches and military bases--waiting for you to find them."

Eerily that paragraph seemed tacked-on as a last minute gesture of goodwill. It also reminded me somehow of the Republican "party of inclusion" shit from a couple years ago. But in all seriousness, this is the most beautiful poetry I have ever read. What inspiring words. What psychologically curious Tale-of-Two-Cities-esque juxtapositions. The Maoists of America are ready to embrace you with open arms, whether you're living in a huge city or a tiny town, whether you like to read books or you're just someone who "hangs out in gay bars." I could go on taking things out of context and then mocking them, but that ignores the really weird thinking behind this call to action. The author is sort of subtly suggesting that potential supporters of the movement can be divided into demographics of historically left/progressive/Democratic groups in a way similar to what marketers and advertisers do when planning to go after target consumers:

* "immigrants, who have so bravely taken to the streets" - Code words for "Mexicans"

* "women, and men, shocked to life by Alito and then South Dakota" - Abortion supporters who, I can only guess, were according to the RCP in a state of cryogenic sleep for the past 30 years rather than being vocally and publicly visible ever since Roe v. Wade but marginalized and ignored. Note the placement of men as an afterthought. This is another psychological slip of the finger, as it betrays yet again the RCP's beliefs that the masses are in a state of hybernation and need a strong vanguard to wake them up and lead them to victory.

* "Black people and others for whom the word 'Katrina' is still a raw wound" - I wonder, out of curiosity, how many "black people" are in the RCP.

* "They are hanging out in gay bars..." - This is a great line if you know the history of the RCP. Up until only 5 years ago, they held a forked position on homosexuality. On one hand, they stated against discrimination of homosexuals in their vision of a future, Maoist society. On the other hand, they combined that with a statement in their Programme that "...at the same time education will be conducted throughout society on the ideology behind homosexuality...and the struggle will be waged to eliminate it and reform homosexuals." They've changed their position somewhat, as you can read for yourself from this supplement to the New Draft Programme online (http://www.rwor.org/margorp/homosexuality.htm). Note how long it takes them to apologize for their previous position while attempting to defend parts of it simultaneously. Here's some advice to all those potential vanguardists out there on how things can be simplified greatly if you plan on telling people what they can or can't do in the privacy of their bedroom:

My Checklist to What You Are or Aren't Allowed to Do
in Your Own Home

1. Have you finished pubescence? Yes/No
2. Has your partner(s) finished pubescence? Yes/No
3. Are you and your partner(s) completely willing to do this
without any coercion from the other whatsoever? Yes/No

If you answered No to any of these questions, what you're
doing is probably pretty uncool. I mean, you're either having
sex with a child or raping somebody. Or else you're a child or
getting raped. Either way, Chairman Michel forbids it.
If you answered yes to every question on this checklist,
congratulations. In his infinite benevolence, Chairman Michel
permits you to proceed with your sweet love-making. Remember to
think of him as you near climax, as the rewards will be that
much greater.

Isn't that a lot simpler than hundreds of pages of bullshit supplements and tiptoeing around the issue? Making your statement on homosexuality, transgender issues, etc. should be done as briefly as possible, otherwise you get weird stuff like this excerpt from their supplement:

"Lesbianism is in many ways a response to the oppression of women in class society, but in and of itself it is not a fundamental solution to this oppression."

Oh, really? I thought lesbianism was women who liked fucking other women. Saying it's mostly an attempt at fighting male hierarchy sounds like something Bill O'Reilly would believe. Yeah, they're just pissed off man-haters who are going through a little rebellion phase. But wait, it gets better (or worse):

"What will sexual practices be like in the future and will homosexuality still exist throughout socialism and communism? Who knows?"

What the fuck kind of question is that? The things state socialists ask themselves really boggles my anarchist mind sometimes. Somehow I doubt Karl Marx was ever sitting at his writing desk one night with nothing more important to wonder about than, "Hmmm, when I am busting my nut in this great society of the future, will I be holding another man's cock or a luscious titty in my hand? What? Not now, Engels! I have more important things to do than worry about finishing Das Kapital! I am trying to figure out what gender my interior decorator will be after the transition to socialism."

"Applicants for admission to the Party who are homosexual must meet the same criteria and standards as anyone else. They must wholeheartedly dedicate themselves to serving the interests of the international proletariat and ultimately of humanity as a whole, placing these above the interests of any individual, special interest group, or sub-section of society. Applicants are therefore expected to move beyond such things as nationalism, anarchism, feminism, or sexual 'identity politics' in the process of making the leap to becoming communists and members of the Party."

You heard them. No special treatment, fags! Only white middle-classers get the helping hand in the RCP. Notice the peculiar last sentence. 1) why the fuck would an anarchist want to join a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist political party that advocates creating a "dictatorship of the proletariat" in the first place? 2) feminists, gay rights activists, and so on must abandon all of these less important issues in order to struggle for the greater good. Once again Marxism shows how utterly stupid it can be when it comes to political activism by reducing the scope of every issue to class struggle. Racism is caused by capitalism, shitty treatment of women is caused by capitalism, homophobia (except that practiced by the RCPUSA prior to 2001, I mean) - capitalism, and so on. And since they can all be blamed on the current capitalist system, merely opposing that system is enough to bring all of its problems into public focus. Unless of course the party you belong to just pays lip service to the problems and doesn't consider them a high priority. But that won't happen, right?


The Real Countdown - Or What All This BS Means

The real countdown is not the elections of 2006, when, as is very likely to happen, voters hopelessly go to the ballots and vote in a new set of liars or reelect the old ones and nothing gets fixed. That countdown passed the first time this country had elections over 200 years ago. No, the real countdown to watch for is what happens if somehow there ever is an actual revolution in the United States and all the people who trusted World Can't Wait, ANSWER, and all these other front groups slowly get fucked over by them when the wolves take off their sheep costumes. If it's a historical tendency for a left-of-center political party to screw over the radical leftists who cooperated with them (study the Democratic Party's enthusiastic response to the Cold War witch hunts for just a little sample), it's no less a tendency for the far left parties to totally fuck over their own people. The reason for this is that a party like the Democrats is run by people obsessed with power. They may have ideals and beliefs, but nothing is supreme to their desire to be in charge, enjoy the fruits of that authority, and stay there no matter what--which means if it's profitable to pretend to be Republicans, they'll act Republican, and if it suddenly becomes politically suicidal not to distance themselves from the Republicans, they'll stop, as if by magic, and become liberals again. This lust for power often derails many grassroots movements that get co-opted or obliterated by their naivete and pitiful faith in "the system" to cure any of its own symptoms, but on very, very rare occasions it somehow works out.

But when one trusts a group like the RPCUSA, the Bolsheviks, and their ilk, you had better hope you fall under their radar when their machinery really starts moving. How many anarchists in Russia, China, Spain, etc. trusted these groups, put their differences aside, and worked together to overthrow the old regime, just to end up against a wall somewhere in front of a firing squad the next month? I am not saying all Marxists support this, but the systems they've put in place or make latter-day defenses for have murdered more "infantile ultra-leftists" (as Lenin calls them) than capitalism ever has. That's why the real countdown is not the number of days until the November elections, it's how long you manage to elude the secret police should a group like the RCP and its "Chairman Avakian" ever satisfy their lust for authority and total control of the public. The difference between the RCP and groups like them from Democrats or other parliamentarists is not this desire to be in charge, wealthy, and have privileges no one else has. The difference is that a group like the RCP has the fanatical devotion to ideology normally only found in organized religions. And combining religion with politics is never a healthy mixture, especially when they have such a cult-like godhead as Mao, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mussolini, or even Avakian.