Hong Kong union leaders arrested as police attack democracy occupation

[ckaihatsu]

Hong Kong union leaders arrested as police attack democracy occupation


Free arrested Hong Kong union leaders!

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/e788a43ccacc225abf8e6e748/images/efc95bc8-5a77-4880-8b10-9e5548e3c9e7.png

At least three leaders of the independent Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) were arrested today as police moved to break up the democracy encampment in the Admiralty section of the city. HKCTU members and leaders had rushed to the site when the police announced their intention to end the occupation by clearing out protestors. At least three HKCTU leaders were among those arrested for ‘obstruction’: Chief Executive Mung Siu Tat, construction union leader Ar Man and Organizing Secretary Fredrik Fan.

CLICK HERE (http://iuf.us6.list-manage1.com/track/click?u=e788a43ccacc225abf8e6e748&id=a055177862&e=090f0b0646) to send a message to the Hong Kong authorities denouncing this attack on democratic expression and demanding that the union leaders and all the arrested be immediately released and all charges dropped.


E-mail: [email protected]
Rampe du Pont-Rouge, 8, CH-1213, Petit-Lancy (Switzerland)
www.iuf.org

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Subscribe to IUF NEWS by e-mail
unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences View it in your browser

[Sharia Lawn]

Chalk it up to an inspiring victory for the Chinese workers state, in its glorious battle against students brainwashed by Western imperialism. Pro-democracy demonstrators should be cleared from the streets by police forces serving billionaires more often, right Trotskyists?

[The Feral Underclass]

Didn't the leaders of the demonstrations agree to hand themselves in?

[ckaihatsu]

Chalk it up to an inspiring victory for the Chinese workers state, in its glorious battle against students brainwashed by Western imperialism. Pro-democracy demonstrators should be cleared from the streets by police forces serving billionaires more often, right Trotskyists?


Nice try, but students can hardly be directly equatable to trade unionists. (Note who exactly the petition is for.)

Your offhand political slur against Trotskyists just means that you and your type would rather not have to take positions in the world as it is, as with geopolitical matters. Either that, or, if you do, you'll just clumsily blend contrasting interests together -- Chinese moneyed elites, with the historically anti-imperialist state of China -- as you're doing here.

You're trying to force a false contradiction, the purported either-or of imperialism-sided / pro-democracy Hong Kong students "versus" still-nominally-anti-Western China, administered by a bureaucratic party.

Certainly the student demonstrators have some valid arguments about state authoritarianism, but they have no alternative political program that could be called progressive -- their politics is a dead-end as far as revolutionaries are concerned since they would only be serving a separatist Hong Kong bourgeois nationalism at best, at this point.

If such West-serving agitators happen to be halted by the status quo it's not like anything is really lost. Trade unionists shouldn't be punished as a result, though.

[Sharia Lawn]

Yes, chaihatsu, pointing out that there are posters here, including you, who support a state that creates and serves the interests of billionaire Chinese capitalists, as they crack down on a movement attempting to win the franchise for impoverished Hong Kong workers, must mean that I am slurring people or refusing to take positions in the world as it is.

[ckaihatsu]

Yes, chaihatsu, pointing out that there are posters here, including you, who support a state that creates and serves the interests of billionaire Chinese capitalists, as they crack down on a movement attempting to win the franchise for impoverished Hong Kong workers, must mean that I am slurring people or refusing to take positions in the world as it is.


I think you're only writing in an attempt to showcase your facility with sarcasm since not much else is happening with your words here.

Again, I don't see how billionaire Chinese capitalists would benefit from the implosion of the Hong Kong student movement, since that movement, no matter how successful, would hardly disrupt the status quo in China anyway. It's an activism non-sequitur.

Here's from a past thread on the topic:





The large protests taking place now in Hong Kong reflect the fact that Hong Kong has become polarized between those supportive of the Peoples’ Republic of China and those mobilizing in opposition to it. There have, in fact, been dueling protests with pro-Beijing forces also mobilizing large numbers in opposition to Occupy Central earlier this year.

Although the opposition movement claims that its struggle for greater autonomy will automatically improve the notoriously terrible conditions of poor and working-class people in Hong Kong, it is a movement based in Hong Kong’s middle and upper-middle classes.

The U.S. State Department has been heavily involved behind-the-scenes in the “civil society” opposition trends within China including Hong Kong’s “pan-democratic” movement. Western-oriented liberal groups are clearly leading the Hong Kong opposition movement and their most significant challengers inside the movement come from the growing far-right anti-PRC trend.




http://www.liberationnews.org/hong-kong-crisis-analyzed-statement-central-committee-psl/

http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2791766&postcount=71


Hong Kong Protests

http://www.revleft.com/vb/hong-kong-protests-t190628/index.html


Also:





Strictly as a liberal reform movement there's nothing objectionable about it, as long as we keep in mind that it plays right into Hong Kong nationalism....

This is the part that so many find so offensive, because of interference from the mainland:





After popular election of one of the nominated candidates, the Chief Executive-elect "will have to be appointed by the Central People's Government." The process of forming the 2016 Legislative Council would be unchanged, but following the new process for the election of the Chief Executive, a new system to elect the Legislative Council via universal suffrage would be developed with the approval of Beijing.[16]




http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Hong_Kong_protests

[Sharia Lawn]

You don't understand something that the Chinese bureaucracy understands. It has explicitly said that it doesn't want to enfranchise the Hong Kong masses because it would allow the poor of Hong Kong a greater political voice. Is it difficult for you to connect how this might be connected to the interests of Chinese and Hong Kong billionaires? More importantly, the subtext of this is a fear that this might stir considerable unrest among Chinese workers who would want a similar political voice. Pointing out that the US government is trying to influence events on the ground doesn't alter the nature of the political program that is actually being struggled for, which is voting rights plain and simple. These rights will be used by different groups for different purposes. Socialists actually concerned with the political agency of the working class, rather than the well being of bureaucrats and their billionaire croneys, know that the correct line in in this context is to push for greater political freedom while trying to win the masses of workers and students to a revolutionary line.

[ckaihatsu]

You don't understand something that the Chinese bureaucracy understands. It has explicitly said that it doesn't want to enfranchise the Hong Kong masses because it would allow the poor of Hong Kong a greater political voice. Is it difficult for you to connect how this might be connected to the interests of Chinese and Hong Kong billionaires? More importantly, the subtext of this is a fear that this might stir considerable unrest among Chinese workers who would want a similar political voice. Pointing out that the US government is trying to influence events on the ground doesn't alter the nature of the political program that is actually being struggled for, which is voting rights plain and simple. These rights will be used by different groups for different purposes. Socialists actually concerned with the political agency of the working class, rather than the well being of bureaucrats and their billionaire croneys, know that the correct line in in this context is to push for greater political freedom while trying to win the masses of workers and students to a revolutionary line.


You're trying to frame this as a civil rights struggle, but in this day and age I don't see why the call can't be for one of 'workers of Asia unite', or something more explicitly militant like that.

If students want to lay the ground for greater militancy, fine, but the *risk* with such moderate demands initially is that such a movement gets *co-opted* into a crass anti-China sentiment, or just simply founders in-place with its merely electoralist agenda.

[ckaihatsu]

Urgent: Trade union leaders arrested as China cracks down on pro-democracy protest


Stop the arrests - free our brothers and sisters now.

View this email in your browser (http://us2.campaign-archive1.com/?u=f3995b46c18cb039818f29a32&id=9aede55e51&e=4e93ef2fad)

https://gallery.mailchimp.com/f3995b46c18cb039818f29a32/images/92a845e6-0ab6-4d1c-aba9-5feee7f58243.jpg
MUNG Siu Tat

At least three leaders of the independent Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions (HKCTU) were arrested yesterday as police moved to break up the democracy encampment in the Admiralty section of the city.

HKCTU members and leaders had rushed to the site when the police announced their intention to end the occupation by clearing out protestors.

At least three HKCTU leaders were among those arrested for 'obstruction': Chief Executive Mung Siu Tat, construction union leader Ar Man and Organizing Secretary Fredrik Fan.

The IUF has launched an online protest campaign -- I strongly encourage you to support this effort.

Click here to send a message (http://labourstart.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f3995b46c18cb039818f29a32&id=cff1d57a5c&e=4e93ef2fad) to the Hong Kong authorities denouncing this attack on democratic expression and demanding that the union leaders and all the arrested be immediately released and all charges unconditionally dropped.

There is full coverage (http://labourstart.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f3995b46c18cb039818f29a32&id=ca21f181f9&e=4e93ef2fad) of the ongoing struggle in Hong Kong updated 24/7 by LabourStart's volunteer correspondents here (http://labourstart.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f3995b46c18cb039818f29a32&id=478877f42c&e=4e93ef2fad).

And in the Philippines, Rolando Pango, a full time organizer with the Partido Manggagawa (PM) was gunned down in Binalbagan town in Negros Occidental on November 29, 2014.

Prior to his assassination Pango was organizing sugar plantation workers on Hacienda Salud, which is leased and operated by Manuel Lamata, President of the United Sugar Producers Federation of the Philippines.

The IUF has launched an online campaign demanding an investigation of the murder and prosecution of those responsible. Please support this campaign too by clicking here (http://labourstart.us2.list-manage.com/track/click?u=f3995b46c18cb039818f29a32&id=c8d1aebd88&e=4e93ef2fad).

Please share this message with your friends, family and fellow union members.



Eric Lee
Copyright © 2014 LabourStart, All rights reserved.
You are receiving this message because you opted in at our website (http://www.labourstart.org) - most likely when you signed up to support one of our online campaigns in support of workers' rights.

Our mailing address is:
LabourStart
27 Muswell Hill Place
London, England N10 3RP
United Kingdom

Add us to your address book


unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences

[Sharia Lawn]

Why would the trade union leaders be arrested when the movement that the Chinese "socialist" state just crushed was in essence a band of pro-imperialist anti-worker demonstrators attacking the glorious conquests of the revolution? What do trade unions and the working class have to do with movements for opening the franchise? Puzzling issues! Maybe you can write a letter to Comrade Kim Jong Un to help clarify these issues for you and your organization, ckaihatsu?

[ckaihatsu]

Why would the trade union leaders be arrested when the movement that the Chinese "socialist" state just crushed


Actually it was the *Hong Kong* authorities that made the arrests, not China.

Here's from post #9:





[S]end a message to the Hong Kong authorities denouncing this attack on democratic expression and demanding that the union leaders and all the arrested be immediately released and all charges unconditionally dropped.


---





was in essence a band of pro-imperialist anti-worker demonstrators attacking the glorious conquests of the revolution?


Your implied critique of the revisionist bureaucratic party that runs China *is* correct, and I'm in agreement on that.

On your characterization of the demonstrators, I would tend to say that, yes, they have 'pro-imperialist' ties, as the PSL article referenced in post #6 documents. I can't agree, though, that the demonstrators are 'anti-worker', especially since the *opposite* is the truth, with workers and trade unionists in their ranks.





What do trade unions and the working class have to do with movements for opening the franchise?


It's very telling that you're so fixated on the mechanism of the democratic vote, when I've already pointed out that such is merely *electoralism*, and is hardly anything approaching trade union militancy or a real pan-Asian revolutionary movement.





Puzzling issues! Maybe you can write a letter to Comrade Kim Jong Un to help clarify these issues for you and your organization, ckaihatsu?


Previously I was giving you the benefit of the doubt in thinking that you were an anarchist, but this last post of yours puts you squarely in the *liberal* camp. Now you're being condescending and red-baiting, too, so that cinches it.

[ckaihatsu]

HKCTU leaders released from custody!


DECEMBER 12: THE HKCTU LEADERS HAVE BEEN RELEASED!

The HKCTU leaders and members who were arrested at the 75-day Admiralty occupation on Thursday, December 11, while resisting the clearing of the occupation zone, were all released on December 12 without charges.

Numerous solidarity actions took place locally and internationally calling for the immediate release of the protesters.

The HKCTU has thanked the IUF for launching the online petition and promoting international solidarity with the Hong Kong democratic struggles. The HKCTU will continue the struggle shoulder-to-shoulder with the workers, students and citizens of Hong Kong, pointing out that "the end of the occupation was just the beginning of a new era for the movement for true democracy".


E-mail: [email protected]
Rampe du Pont-Rouge, 8, CH-1213, Petit-Lancy (Switzerland)
www.iuf.org

Follow us on Facebook and Twitter

Subscribe to IUF NEWS by e-mail
unsubscribe from this list update subscription preferences View it in your browser

[Sharia Lawn]

Ckaihatsu, that you don't fathom any connection between workers' democracy and socialist politics leaves no doubt about why you leap joyously into the arms of dictators like the North Korean Kims. The "ties" your group claims to have uncovered ranks up there with the worst Stalinist smear tactics. You might as well claim that Ferguson protestors have "ties" to law enforcement because agent provocateurs have been showing up at demonstrations around the United States. Since China controls Hong Kong's government, I'm not sure what you hope to gain by mentioning how it was technically Hong Kong authorities making an arrest. Hong Kong authorities are appointed by and are subject to control by the Chinese bureaucrats. This is only red baiting if you are politically confused enough to think that China or North Korea have any relationship to socialism apart from the thinnest propaganda these states produce for domestic consumption.

[ckaihatsu]

Ckaihatsu, that you don't fathom any connection between workers' democracy and socialist politics


That's a wholly spurious conclusion on your part since this entire *thread* is in support of union leaders, and this is a socialist forum.





leaves no doubt about why you leap joyously into the arms of dictators like the North Korean Kims.


Fun.

You're smearing my revolutionary politics by arbitrarily associating it with North Korea.





The "ties" your group claims to have uncovered ranks up there with the worst Stalinist smear tactics.


Here's what I found from a web search:





The website project directly funded by the US State Department through USAID grants to NED and NDI Is described on the NED website as “The Centre for Comparative and Public Law (CCPL) at the University of Hong Kong, with support from NDI, is working to amplify citizens’ voices in that consultation process by creating Design Democracy Hong Kong (www.designdemocracy.hk), a unique and neutral website that gives citizens a place to discuss the future of Hong Kong’s electoral system.”

Benny Tai the leader of the group ‘Occupy Central’ is on the board for CCPL and a member of the academic staff on Hong Kong University.

A quick click on the (www.designdemocracy.hk) website has Benny Tai and a slew of other public figures of the Pro-Democracy movement, which at a glance appears to encompass all of them, including Joshua Wong of Scholarism.




http://revolution-news.com/us-state-dept-funding-and-occupy-central-the-ties-that-bind/





You might as well claim that Ferguson protestors have "ties" to law enforcement because agent provocateurs have been showing up at demonstrations around the United States.


No, you're just making stuff up here.





Since China controls Hong Kong's government, I'm not sure what you hope to gain by mentioning how it was technically Hong Kong authorities making an arrest. Hong Kong authorities are appointed by and are subject to control by the Chinese bureaucrats.


Okay, I won't quibble because the distinction is immaterial -- this whole thing is more heat than light, anyway, since the fulfillment of the movement's greatest ambitions would hardly even shift the status quo.





This is only red baiting if you are politically confused enough to think that China or North Korea have any relationship to socialism apart from the thinnest propaganda these states produce for domestic consumption.


I've already said, in post #11, that China is not socialist.

[Sharia Lawn]

ckaihatsu, pointing to the fact that the US government is trying to co-opt the movement in Hong Kong does not prove that the movement, as a whole or even substantially, is in bed with American imperialism. That was the accusation you made, and it was taken straight out of the most disgraceful section of the Stalinist smear playbook. Every progressive movement, revolutionary or otherwise, will have false friends who are pretending to support it just to try to secure a leadership position within it and defang it. If you used this rubric for judging whether to support a movement, you'd be doing nothing politically except posting links to revleft from the PSL, a group whose politics you seem to identify with, and who most definitely do leap joyously into the arms of the Kims. You want to claim that my connecting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong with labor union leaders is specious, yet the title to your own thread announces "Hong Kong union leaders arrested as police attack democracy occupation." Why were these labor leaders arrested? Because they were involved in and supporting the movement! Why? Because, as even the Chinese bureaucrats recognize, a growing and successful movement to open the political process up for worker participation sets in motion a massive threat to the rule of the Chinese bureaucracy. The movement for democracy in China has everything to do with destabilizing the existing government by increasing workers' agency. If you don't support this, you either don't support the movement for socialism, or you divorce socialism from workers' revolutionary democratic political agency.

[ckaihatsu]

ckaihatsu, pointing to the fact that the US government is trying to co-opt the movement in Hong Kong does not prove that the movement, as a whole or even substantially, is in bed with American imperialism.


You're claiming that there's an unwanted U.S. political *incursion* into the student leadership -- that it's a 'coup' of sorts over the student movement, and that people like Benny Tai and Joshua Wong have somehow been coerced into being 'puppets' for U.S. interests.

The report I'm going by, in my previous post, does not support your characterization -- someone who is on a *board*, and/or on *staff* would not be there *unwillingly*.

Again:





Benny Tai the leader of the group ‘Occupy Central’ is on the board for CCPL and a member of the academic staff on Hong Kong University.

A quick click on the (www.designdemocracy.hk) website has Benny Tai and a slew of other public figures of the Pro-Democracy movement, which at a glance appears to encompass all of them, including Joshua Wong of Scholarism.





That was the accusation you made, and it was taken straight out of the most disgraceful section of the Stalinist smear playbook. Every progressive movement, revolutionary or otherwise, will have false friends who are pretending to support it just to try to secure a leadership position within it and defang it.


You're characterizing the U.S. influence on the student movement as being one from *without*, trying to *reach in*, whereas the fact that Benny Tai and Joshua Wong are with the CCPL indicates that they've made the effort to *reach out*, external to the student movement itself, to Western institutions.





If you used this rubric for judging whether to support a movement, you'd be doing nothing politically except posting links to revleft from the PSL, a group whose politics you seem to identify with, and who most definitely do leap joyously into the arms of the Kims.


(More fanciful imaginings on your part.)





You want to claim that my connecting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong with labor union leaders is specious,


I don't see where I made such a claim. Feel free to indicate my prior wording that indicates this, if you can.





yet the title to your own thread announces "Hong Kong union leaders arrested as police attack democracy occupation." Why were these labor leaders arrested? Because they were involved in and supporting the movement!


Agreed.





Why? Because, as even the Chinese bureaucrats recognize, a growing and successful movement to open the political process up for worker participation sets in motion a massive threat to the rule of the Chinese bureaucracy. The movement for democracy in China has everything to do with destabilizing the existing government by increasing workers' agency. If you don't support this, you either don't support the movement for socialism, or you divorce socialism from workers' revolutionary democratic political agency.


Here's my position, from previous posts to this thread:





Strictly as a liberal reform movement there's nothing objectionable about it, as long as we keep in mind that it plays right into Hong Kong nationalism....





You're trying to frame this as a civil rights struggle, but in this day and age I don't see why the call can't be for one of 'workers of Asia unite', or something more explicitly militant like that.

If students want to lay the ground for greater militancy, fine, but the *risk* with such moderate demands initially is that such a movement gets *co-opted* into a crass anti-China sentiment, or just simply founders in-place with its merely electoralist agenda.

[Sharia Lawn]

You're claiming that there's an unwanted U.S. political *incursion* into the student leadership -- that it's a 'coup' of sorts over the student movement, and that people like Benny Tai and Joshua Wong have somehow been coerced into being 'puppets' for U.S. interests.
No, I never said anything about a 'coup.' I said that bourgeois forces frequently try to attempt to co-opt a movement, to influence its leadership. Sometimes it is successful. That doesn't change the nature of the rank and file movement. It means that it is all the more important to support the rank and file against its traitorous leadership. You have been implying that the rank and file is in line with this potentially traitorous-imperialist leadership, whose existence is still very much in doubt regardless of how many Stalinist smear sites you link to substantiate your flimsy case. Then when I point out that union members, leaders, and other workers are in the thick of the movement--that there is a link between workers struggling for the franchise and the struggle for a socialist society--you alternate between saying I'm wrong on the one hand, and saying that I am arguing against a denial you've never made on the other. I guess this isn't surprising, being that in another thread you profess 'neturality' on the US imperialist bombing of the Middle East. Revolutionaries take the side of the oppressed and the workers, in the Middle East, in Hong Kong, and around the world. They don't side with Chinese billionaires, their bureaucrats, or try to stake a false neutrality between the oppressor and oppressed as the former is strangling the latter.

[ckaihatsu]

No, I never said anything about a 'coup.' I said that bourgeois forces frequently try to attempt to co-opt a movement, to influence its leadership. Sometimes it is successful. That doesn't change the nature of the rank and file movement.


So what's the case, then, regarding the Hong Kong student leadership, especially in relation to the rank-and-file?

I've only referenced two articles, and that's the information I'm going by. If you have anything additional, please let me and others know of it here.





It means that it is all the more important to support the rank and file against its traitorous leadership.


You're speaking in generalities now -- can I take your words to be about the specifics of the *Hong Kong* situation, as well?





You have been implying that the rank and file is in line with this potentially traitorous-imperialist leadership, whose existence is still very much in doubt regardless of how many Stalinist smear sites you link to substantiate your flimsy case.


Again, I think that I (we) are at a loss for appropriate information.





Then when I point out that union members, leaders, and other workers are in the thick of the movement--that there is a link between workers struggling for the franchise and the struggle for a socialist society--you alternate between saying I'm wrong on the one hand, and saying that I am arguing against a denial you've never made on the other.


I don't think I disagree with you on any *theoretical* grounds, according to these latest posts of yours, but I don't appreciate the knee-jerk antagonism, especially since the specifics around the student movement's rank and file aren't in front of us.





I guess this isn't surprising, being that in another thread you profess 'neturality' on the US imperialist bombing of the Middle East.


Here's that post:





Update / clarification on my position:

It's good to have a *general* anti-U.S.-war line regarding Iraq and Syria, in the sense of not infringing on the national sovereignty of those countries, such as they are.

But I remain very concerned with the expansionism of ISIS / ISIL, as with its newly founded 'Caliphate', and its religious fundamentalism and social intolerance generally. I don't think it's glib to term it a religious-style *fascism*, which is only going to fester and worsen as the black-hole of international politics in a worldwide worsening economic situation.

For *this* context I am taking a decidedly *neutral* position regarding U.S. / imperialist incursions against ISIS, because I think the Western powers are best-equipped to intervene in that situation, even though the actuality happens to be far less than what the Obama Administration promised, according to news reports -- see post #65.


To elaborate, I'm seeing a certain callousness from both U.S. imperialism (as usual), *and* from the nascent Islamic State that's located on parts of Iraq and Syria.

Of course I'm opposed to both organizations on principle, but I'm neutral regarding the *predominance* of one-or-the-other, since they're so alike in their political composition (American fundamentalism vs. Islamic fundamentalism). I'll suggest that, as a matter of revolutionary defeatism, we in the West may have somewhat more traction in defeating *U.S.* imperialism / fundamentalism than the Islamic kind, the latter also being lesser in magnitude.





Revolutionaries take the side of the oppressed and the workers, in the Middle East, in Hong Kong, and around the world. They don't side with Chinese billionaires, their bureaucrats,


This is an unacceptable charge -- nothing I've posted can be correctly characterized as support for economic or political elites in China. I've simply pointed out that any popular movement in Hong Kong has to be more militant in its aims, than we're currently seeing, for it to actually be in opposition to Chinese hegemony.





or try to stake a false neutrality between the oppressor and oppressed as the former is strangling the latter.


Here *you're* the one unjustifiably blurring the distinction between classes within the same movement -- not me.

The Islamic State / Caliphate / ISIS / ISIL is *not* a homogenous, purely 'oppressed' population, because it has distinctly separatist claims to power, as against the Western nations. (I'll draw a parallel to the military-type uprisings in Libya of recent years, and that outcome.)

Yes, there are the oppressed within that region -- as anywhere on earth -- but those peoples are now being oppressed by the political elites *there*, of the Islamic State (and from the world's larger imperialist hegemonic forces).

The revolutionary position is not advanced by being *silent* on ISIS / ISIL, or, worse, thinking that it's a force for anti-imperialism, when in fact it's actually *separatist*, for its own purposes.

[Sharia Lawn]

No, ckaihatsu, the fact that ISIS is a sectarian band of reactionaries doesn't mean we take a 'neutral' line in regards to the US bombing. ISIS is itself the creation of underdevelopment and imperialism in that part of the world. The proper line is to denounce and oppose the US bombing as well as the Islamist reactionaries, in support of a united working-class fight-back beholden to neither political force. My position on this issue, elaborated in other threads, has been clear enough from the start that I do not need to issue amendments or addenda. It's absurd to think that we don't have enough information to ascertain whether the rank and file of the Umbrella movement is being paid off by or is under the thrall of US imperialism. The demands which catapulted them onto the streets are for greater political representation for the working masses and oppressed youths of Hong Kong. A revolutionary turning his back on those masses just because a leadership might--might--be under the sway of the US government is the equivalent of turning away from work in trade unions because they are under the leadership of nationalist petty bourgeois bureaucrats. Your positions on the American bombing and on the Umbrella movement are social-democrat hemming and hawing about imperfections that arise in every movement, and used as an excuse for a neutral position that effectively ordains the existing and unequal power relations between imperialist and colonized, oppressor and oppressed.

[ckaihatsu]

No, ckaihatsu, the fact that ISIS is a sectarian band of reactionaries doesn't mean we take a 'neutral' line in regards to the US bombing. ISIS is itself the creation of underdevelopment and imperialism in that part of the world. The proper line is to denounce and oppose the US bombing as well as the Islamist reactionaries, in support of a united working-class fight-back beholden to neither political force.


Understood, but if U.S. bombing happens to mitigate the expansion of the Islamic State, I see that as 'intramural' among the powers (similar to a world war), and distinctly outside the politics of a united working class fightback.





My position on this issue, elaborated in other threads, has been clear enough from the start that I do not need to issue amendments or addenda. It's absurd to think that we don't have enough information to ascertain whether the rank and file of the Umbrella movement is being paid off by or is under the thrall of US imperialism. The demands which catapulted them onto the streets are for greater political representation for the working masses and oppressed youths of Hong Kong.


Perhaps, but I remain critical of the movement's limited, electoralist demands -- for once I'm *not* the optimistic one in a comparison of viewpoints on revolutionary potentials.





A revolutionary turning his back on those masses just because a leadership might--might--be under the sway of the US government


No, this, too, is unfair and ungrounded -- I've made no indication of being anti-working-class in the context of Hong Kong (or anywhere else). Please note who started this thread in the first place and what the initial posting's subject matter is about.





is the equivalent of turning away from work in trade unions because they are under the leadership of nationalist petty bourgeois bureaucrats.




Your positions on the American bombing and on the Umbrella movement are social-democrat hemming and hawing about imperfections that arise in every movement,


No, I roundly disagree with this characterization, too, and will note again that you're simply making stuff up without referencing any content of mine in corroboration.





and used as an excuse for a neutral position that effectively ordains the existing and unequal power relations between imperialist and colonized, oppressor and oppressed.


You're misrepresenting my position -- here are the relevant parts, again:





It's good to have a *general* anti-U.S.-war line regarding Iraq and Syria




[I] am taking a decidedly *neutral* position regarding U.S. / imperialist incursions against ISIS, because I think the Western powers are best-equipped to intervene in that situation





*[Y]ou're* the one unjustifiably blurring the distinction between classes within the same movement -- not me.

The Islamic State / Caliphate / ISIS / ISIL is *not* a homogenous, purely 'oppressed' population, because it has distinctly separatist claims to power, as against the Western nations. (I'll draw a parallel to the military-type uprisings in Libya of recent years, and that outcome.)

Yes, there are the oppressed within that region -- as anywhere on earth -- but those peoples are now being oppressed by the political elites *there*, of the Islamic State (and from the world's larger imperialist hegemonic forces).

The revolutionary position is not advanced by being *silent* on ISIS / ISIL, or, worse, thinking that it's a force for anti-imperialism, when in fact it's actually *separatist*, for its own purposes.

[Sharia Lawn]

ckaihatsu, of course we shouldn't abstain from criticizing the Umbrella movement. We criticize its limitations within the context of supporting it against state repression and emphasizing the progressive nature of the struggle for the demands, as limited as those demands may be. You claim I am misrepresenting your position on the US bombing of IS. I am not. Your position is of a highly general and diffuse attitude of opposition to the US while staking a position of 'neutrality' about the specific campaign. How is anybody supposed to read that position and not immediately think of the betrayals of social democracy, who work hand-in-hand with the bourgeoisie under the similar guise of 'neutrality' against supposedly greater evils, while issuing similarly abstract and diffuse declarations of their support for socialism in the sweet by and by. Revolutionaries oppose capitalism and imperialism now in reality, not as a set of attitudes that will kick in at some point in the future under a different configuration of forces that will in reality never obtain.

[ckaihatsu]

ckaihatsu, of course we shouldn't abstain from criticizing the Umbrella movement. We criticize its limitations within the context of supporting it against state repression and emphasizing the progressive nature of the struggle for the demands, as limited as those demands may be.


Agreed.





You claim I am misrepresenting your position on the US bombing of IS. I am not. Your position is of a highly general and diffuse attitude of opposition to the US while staking a position of 'neutrality' about the specific campaign.


There is nothing 'diffuse' about this statement:





[I]t's good to have a *general* anti-U.S.-war line regarding Iraq and Syria, in the sense of not infringing on the national sovereignty of those countries, such as they are.


And, *of course* I'm neutral about inter-national -- such as the U.S. vs. the IS -- campaigns of mutual conflict, because the working class wouldn't benefit in the least from one or the other party emerging triumphant from any such rivalries.





How is anybody supposed to read that position and not immediately think of the betrayals of social democracy, who work hand-in-hand with the bourgeoisie under the similar guise of 'neutrality' against supposedly greater evils, while issuing similarly abstract and diffuse declarations of their support for socialism in the sweet by and by.


It's unclear what concrete political situation you're alluding to, and how that unspecified situation may conceivably relate to my position as just stated -- you're basically free-associating here.





Revolutionaries oppose capitalism and imperialism now in reality, not as a set of attitudes that will kick in at some point in the future under a different configuration of forces that will in reality never obtain.


Now you're implying that I'm vacillating and/or kicking-the-can-down-the-road, while not referencing any of my wording to corroborate your unfounded claims.