Mr. Moses:
So, I just read your counterpunch post from today (8/22/05) and I have to admit that I’m thoroughly perplexed. I enjoyed the quotes from the soldiers and veterans that you mentioned at the end and the part at the beginning about Marx was confusing but I enjoyed the sentiment of wanting to make Marxist ideas more accessible. All in all, though I just found it to be very convoluted and I’m not really sure where you were trying to go with it. Clearly you’re alluding to a lot of things that most of us (who are not able to go to Texas right now) have no idea about. Some kind of arrests, something about the International Socialist Organization and two different Camp Casey’s. Maybe I can dig around the internet for this stuff, but I don’t have the time to follow every twist and turn of the inspiring events at Camp Casey, so you’ll have to forgive me. Since many of us have full time jobs, families and many other responsibilities it may have been helpful to a number of your readers to fill us in this information.
The only thing I could piece together was a general criticism of how radical groups (presumably the ISO) don’t take the time to listen and report from Camp Casey. Like you, I’m a fan of the ISO and I read their paper on line. The current issue actually has a long article about Camp
Casey, written from there, right on the cover. The paper comes out once a week, so I’m sure there will be another report in the paper this week too. (They seem to have a couple reporters there.) The current issue also has an interview with two soldiers from Iraq Veterans Against the War, not to mention a long review of a book about the soldier’s rebellion in Viet Nam and an interview with an abortion rights provider. All of this seems to contradict your argument. It appears that the socialists, or the ISO, at least, is doing quite a good job listening and reporting what their allies have to say. Here is the website: http://www.socialistworker.org/. Maybe if you took a second to read their ‘sectarian’ newspaper you would have realized that your attack was unfounded in reality. Now all you’ve done is dishonestly (or ignorantly) discredited all socialist groups in such a way that certainly won’t help get marx’s ideas more into the mainstream, which you claim as a goal.
In solidarity, but disagreement…
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Reply: With such fine resources at your fingertips, I’m sorry you find yourself digging around the internet in order to understand what was going on at Camp Casey this weekend. I really should have been more helpful. Meanwhile, as I say in my article, the socialists have been quite reliable propagandists for the peace movement. My offer still stands: I would even help them peddle lit on site.
P.S.: I have seen such high quality mail from an article. I’m going to post every bit of it at peacefile.org/phpnuke
MoPress 