Re: Rev Int Movement (fwd)

Self-defense and Self-preservation supercedes all other ethical values, 
since
they are the basis for the preservation of the human species. In the 
absense of
a just legal system, people have the moral right to band together and 
declare
their grievances and fight to end the injustice. That is was 1776 was all 
about,
as I recall. With covert operations, Wackenhut, and USA trained
military/bureacratic terrorists who drag children off streets and kill
the"because they're bad for business", what do you advice doing to redress 
these
immoral actions? By the way, I think a case can be made that the Soviet
"Communists" were not communist by definition, the Bolsheviks only referred 
to
themselves as such and the right-wing in America found intelletual sawsdust 
to
pick up on the moniker for their own ideological purposes. Your local 
downtown
business association that requires that you be a member of the association
before you can get space and a license to do business there is an 
application of
communist principles, though the association represents a union of business
owners, not workers, who union business owners, having their own "union", 
fight
and suppress organizations of workers. So given the gold owners who rule, a 
case
can be made for fighting for just causes -- one of the key principles of 
Western
civilization, since Plato and the later Christian eras.

//CJR

Ed Weick wrote:

>       mine writes:
>
> >>>communist parties have a legitimate right to exist even >>>though they
> use violence. their violence is against capitalism, which is >>>okey for 
>me.
> i believe that there is a legitimate right to use violence >>>on the part 
>of
> the oppressed against the oppressers.
>
> Ed Weick responds:
>
> I would never question the right of communist parties to exist.  I would,
> however, question that they have a legitimate right to use violence to
> attain their ends.  Who, other than they themselves, would have given them
> this right?  Once a group believes it has that right, it can rationalize 
>any
> action it feels is necessary.  The actions of the Communist Party of the
> early Soviet Union against peasants and others it identified as obstacles 
>to
> its reforms caused tremendous dislocation and the deaths of millions, all 
>in
> the name of the ends being justified by the means.  Pol Pot, has I 
>believe,
> been mentioned on this list   again, millions died on the killing fields
> because of the belief that a society had to be reorganized into something
> more ideologically correct.
>
> It is not, however, communism or any other specific ideology that is the
> problem, it is ideology itself.  Any ideology, when carried to the level 
>of
> a true belief, becomes something that deprives other points of view of
> legitimacy.  The insistence that things be seen in only one way, that only
> one path is correct and all others are in error, has occurred many times 
>in
> history.  Early Christians were martyred for their beliefs in ancient 
>Rome.
> They in turn persecuted other faiths when they became the official church.
> In medieval times, their brutality toward Jews and infidels knew almost no
> bounds.  Following the Reformation, Christians brutalized Christians:
> witness Calvin's Geneva.
>
> In our secular age, this insistance that things can be viewed in only one
> way, that all others are in error, has been moved, very largely, into the
> political sphere.  I believe that what Gert Koler was saying in pointing 
>out
> that the differences between the extreme left and the extreme right are 
>not
> that great referred not so much to ideology but to behaviour.  The 
>specific
> characteristics of beliefs matter little when beliefs are extreme.  
>Anything
> that is extreme is dangerous.  Hitler was responsible for the deaths of 
>some
> six million Jews and perhaps at least as many Slavs.  According to people 
>I
> talked with in Russia a few years ago, estimates of Stalin's toll range 
>from
> twenty to sixty million Soviet citizens.
>
> But to justify extreme actions, scapegoats are needed.  Christians had 
>Jews
> and infidels, Catholics had Protestants and Protestants had Catholics.
> Currently, communists and other true believers have capitalists.  This is
> not to say that capitalists are innocent.  However, it is to say that one
> has to be very careful about who one labels as a wrong doer, and about 
>what
> is being done wrong.  Being a Canadian, I am used to a good, if far from
> perfect, system of laws enforced by strong courts.  If I am accusing 
>someone
> of something, or being accused myself, I prefer to rely on those laws and
> those courts.  I don't want to have to take matters into my own hands.
>
> However, I do recognize that much of the world does not operate the way
> Canada does, that many people worldwide do not have rights under the law,
> and even if they have them, they exist in name only, not in practice.  In
> such cases, people may have to use violent means to protect or assert
> themselves.  My one wish is that they do so in a pragmatic way, without
> clothing what they are doing in some grand ideological mishmash.  I 
>recently
> posted something to this list on garrison towns in Jamaica.  People in 
>these
> towns have organized themselves into self-protective gangs, which, because
> of their size and strength, can not be dismissed by the establishment.  In
> the absence of strong laws and courts, and without an impartial police, 
>this
> is what people feel they have to do, and it does seem to work for them.  I
> saw much the same thing in the slums of Sao Paulo a couple of years ago,
> where laws are also weak, courts are so slow as to be non existent, and 
>the
> police is an army of the establishment.  My point is that the people who
> have organized themselves have done so practically, not ideologically.  
>They
> are not labeling or scapegoating anyone, but simply protecting what they 
>see
> as their rights and interests.
>
> Hope this helps to explain my position.
>
> Ed Weick