Libya and the dilemma of the Lesser of Two Wonderfuls

And we're back. We apologize for the absence, but we've had quite our work cut out for us, purging every last member who had turned down the wishy-washy road of progressivism, as Lawrence O'Donnell might castigate them for doing. (Who himself is a "European-style socialist" and therefore weak as fuck, too.) The progressives have been too busy twisting Gramsci, and foisting Alinkyism and the liberal versions of identity politics over the Left, so our purge was near complete. With such a reduced cadre, it is a wonder we have anyone left to level political injunctions upon our followers.

Because of a recent request by one of our fearless and inveterate General Secretary-Chairman's younglings, a late convocation of leading party commissars have been summoned to pontificate upon the Party's doctrinal position over NA✞O's aggression against Qattafi, now in it's sixth month. The padawan is correct that this is a question we should have long ago expressed interest in, as are those regarding the Arab Spring, which itself began in Carthaginian Winter and is wading into a Bedouin Autumn.

Unfortunately, our meeting was devoured by discord. Each side had authoritative evidence to push its agenda. The Tankies Division of our Central Committee entered prepared with issues of the Final Call and the Workers World which presented irrefutable evidence that Ghadafi's collaboration with European powers and training of genocidal paramilitaries in Western Africa are irrelevant in defining Colonel Khatafy as a lifelong champion of socialist jamarahiya and green revolution (we hear his Ukrainian nurses' vibrators are biodiesel-fueled).

On the other hand, the Party's commissars aligned with the Liberal Imperialism Faction fruitfully expressed that when former empires led by conservative parties bomb civilian targets from jets to take out a leader that counters their hegemony in Africa and prove they still have some mojo, it is all outweighed by the fact that this time the United States is run by a Democrat with a father from Africa. The Liberal Imperialist Faction came complete with a scientific chart animating a seesaw where Sarkozy, Cameron and Berlusconi's sabre-rattling were easily outweighed by President Obama's not-being-George-Bush.

As it was clear that the Party had to take sides with either a murderous Cold War relic made up of former colonial powers manifested in NA✞O who just weeks before had been imploring other regional tyrants like Ben Ali, Saleh and Mubarak to remain in power, or a murderous Third Worldist relic of a tyrant who speechified about wholesale slaughtering his populace so that his sons could continue racing sports cars through European cities and he could continue selling out Palestinian refugees, we deliberated on the matter for quite some time. Because, y'know, you just can't rationally oppose both sides while supporting the Libyan people's own self-determination. No, you mustn't think of doing that.

In the end, we decided to order some white pizzas and a side of crazy bread, and reconvene via conference call.

The 101st Sectbourne Brigade at the Iraq Veterans Against the War

What a great summer for conventions! Be it Labor Notes, Service Employees International Union, Democratic, Republican or Iraq Veterans Against the War, mix some extra miracle whip into the pasta salad, slice a watermelon, and put the flask into a paper bag, because it's Convention Time!

No, the CP(F) will not be having it's planned Rocky Mountain regional convention, as that one collective who was going to host us broke up, that Jewish museum found out we're anti-Zionist and canceled our reservations, and those students couldn't get their act together to get the paperwork in on time. So, I guess we won't be able to pass Comrade Murphy's proposed law.

Well, in lieu of this, we have been plotting for the past month to have a fractiously solid bloc at the Iraq Veterans Against the War convention coming up this weekend in the Twin Cities (which we love, since we believe they were once a singly city but broke up over an area code. We could be wrong, but we have Comrade O'Reilly fact-checking.)

This convention will be a big deal, not just because of steady growth in that now four year old organization, but because our rivals in the International Socialist Organization are pushing a big slate of candidates for those positions on the national board that are open. The more independent-minded but no less radical IVAWers (pronounce that) are also pushing a slate that would try to wrest the group from total ISO control. And either faction could split if the other wins.

Well, in honor of this, our Fractious Caucus will be forming in the moments before the convention begins, and we will pursue a third slate of five comradely veterans, each of whom will call for the IVAW to split their separate ways. In the event that we lose, we will consolidate our forces into the caucus (many of whom were drill sergeants or Coast Guard), and plan other means of demoralizing the troops (ahem, anti-war veterans) until they all go our way.

Because our Party sees no need for a united front of anti-war soldiers, fighting both for their and their compatriots' healthcare and tuition benefits, proving that many opponents of these grisly wars are among the loudest in opposition, and giving a united voice to those who have direct experiences having fought in the war. We think that they should all march to our orders, and if any of them don't, stand down and give us twenty!

So, be ready for us, the ISO, and the state agents to be very present at the IVAW convention with every plan of co-optation or division, and if you don't like it, step on a mine, and take that in your pipe and smoke it!

UJP and SO!UTION Proposals for actions

Thanks to a three month dispute over the process on which our meetings would be held, and whether colons or semi-colons were more appropriate for the flyer sub-headlines, the UJP and SO!UTION anti-war coalitions had as yet not decided on a proposal for the next few days of protest on the fifth anniversary of this imperialist war against Iraq (which technically started back in 1991 and never ended, but that is beside the point). The final plan is as follows.

The Protest Old-Guard, a section of the UJP leadership which had organized large rallies for Western unilateral disarmament thirty years ago, has proposed the following: As the war approaches its sixth year, we suggest the anti-war movement take the lead of the LGBTTIAQ rights movement. Their most significant annual activity began a revolt, which indeed the anti-war movement can relate to on the first night of the invasion. It then became an annual protest march, which we have indeed carried out each year. And now it is a big, festive parade. We propose to line up corporate sponsors (putting the funds raised in our trust), call for revellers along the routes, and to hold celebratory anti-war parades with the co-sponsorship of all cities involved. In this way, we can become the mainstream, and as the Iraq war will clearly continue thanks to the inept policies of the current anti-war movement, we can build it up to a larger and more mainstream parade every year. We will know we have hit pay dirt when the local news media and municipal governments inflate rather than underestimate our numbers.

Unfortunately, the renegade faction SO!UTION has drawn out of this plan, and will be wrangling with municipal governments in their respective courts for downtown march permits that they should be allowed but will never get. The marches will occur whichever year there is finally a settlement.

And the youth movement Students for an Ontological Society will be organizing a feeder march to look for if there an anti-war movement even exists. Meanwhile, the Students for a Bolshevik Society will organize a hostile breakaway out of this feeder.

All comrades must boycott all other actions that are planned by any other anti-war coalitions, whose make-ups are not at all democratic and all-encompassing.

The Fifth Anniversary of the Iraq War approaches

As the Fifth anniversary of the Iraq War approaches, inviting all of the expected hyperbole by our unimaginative brothers and sisters in the anti-imperialist and anti-militarist struggles here in the belly of the beast, our Troops Out Today Directorate wonders what lessons activists have learned from the past several years.

There certainly have been many of the greatest examples of factionalism on many sides of the conflict, from sectarian fighting in Iraq to break-ups of conservative counter-protester groups to, of course, splinters in the anti-war movement. Granted, UFPJ isn't sending suicide bombers to ANSWER rallies, and ANSWER in turn isn't assassinating Troops Out Now Coalition clerics. But both of these manifestations of opposition factionalism are very valuable to us indeed.

As the Troops Out Today Directorate, in collaboration with SO!UTION (Stop Occupations! United To Implode Oppression Network) and the Union for Justice with Peace (UJP), was the initial callers for demonstrations on March 19th and 20th (by getting the ball rolling a full twenty months ago), we are excited to see separate protest rallies and marches will be held in many cities, but frustrated that some of the other, albeit more reformist anti-war coalitions are actually working collaboratively, a travesty if ever there was one. When demonstrations are separate, it allows the news media to better establish which anti-war coalitions are strongest. Irregardless, SO!UTION and UJP expect to hold a rally in Los Angeles with forty thousand participants, and a simultaneous one in New York's Staten Island borough with ninety thousand attendees.

And there are also great developments in the CP(F) efforts to usurp Iraq Veterans Against the War and related groups to our own ends (namely, more factionalism), though we are finding stiff competition for these exact same aims from the International Socialist Organization. Why can't they understand that we are simply better usurpers and factionalizers than they are?