Speaking of Stalin, the Kerry camp will be delighted to hear that they've been endorsed by the Communist Party USA, the "official" Commie party in the United States, which gives voice to the ABB movement on the Left. While Kerry's economic platform is "not as dramatic a program as we would place, but one that goes in a significantly different direction," on the other hand, say the Commies:
"He is the vehicle by which George W. Bush, representing the most extreme reaction, can be defeated. A Kerry presidency by itself will not bring the changes, it will undoubtedly require huge mass pressure to bring the changes. In this regard ..., a Kerry election presents the possibility for greater struggles to undo damage and move forward.
"There is concern in many quarters that Kerry has not taken a strong enough stand, especially on issues of race and on the war in Iraq. Placing this criticism, Julian Bond said at the Take Back America conference, 'Too often the opposition party has been absent without leave. When one party is shameless the other can't afford to be spineless.' Yet, he concluded, given the threat to civil rights enforcement on every front and right-wing control of all branches of government, 'The consequences of loss are too high to bear. We have to ensure every citizen registers and votes and guarantee the theft of Black votes never happens again.' These formulations speak volumes to those within peace and left organizations who insist there is no difference between Kerry and Bush. On the basis of the record alone, this is not the case.'"
It isn't surprising that a party that could ignore the crimes of the gulag would subordinate the deaths of thousands of Iraqis to the issue of how many chads were counted in Florida. As a way to prove their complete lack of any moral sense, not to mention their slavish devotion to the Democratic party machine, such a stance is a stroke of strategic genius on the part of these latter-day Leninists.
I guess the Commies will be among the "protesters" at the Democratic national convention, which we'll be subjected to all week, and I had to laugh when I read the complaint of the protesters' leader, Medea Benjamin, at being caged up in Boston:
"We don't deserve to be put in a detention center, a concentration camp. It's tragic that here in Boston, the birthplace of democracy, our First Amendment rights are being trampled on."
Even more tragic is that self-proclaimed leftist leaders such as Benjamin – a founder of the trendy-lefty Global Exchange, as well as "Code Pink," a women's antiwar group, and a former Green Party candidate –are supporting Kerry, sliming Nader, and basically taking the CPUSA "united front" line of Anybody But Bush. No, Ms. Benjamin doesn't deserve to be put in a concentration camp: nobody does. But she does deserve a pointed reminder that Iraqi lives are valuable, too. Sadly, the necessity of such a reminder underscores the imperialist arrogance that pervades our political discourse, and can infect even the "antiwar" movement of an imperialist country.
full: http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=3189
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