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The Korean War: 60 years later

category eastern asia | imperialism / war | feature author Wednesday November 24, 2010 06:06author by Wayne Price Report this post to the editors

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Sth Korean soldiers walk among dead political prisoners in Daejon

In recent days we have seen an escalation in tension betwen the two Koreas which is being presented by Western countries as an intolerable aggression on the part of the dictatorial, bellicose northern State against their democratic, peaceful neighbours. We think it might be interesting to present to our readers a text from our regular contributor Wayne Price, as a way to better understand the current situation and the reasons behind today's divided Korea.

At this stage we would support a mediated solution which sees the Korean people themselves, on both sides of the border, as main players, with no external interference or decisions made behind their backs. Such a solution would be the only way to open the door to a united, socialist, democratic and free Korea and guarantee, in this way, a sustainable peace with social justice.

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The Korean War: 60 years later


Background: The Korean War

The Korean War of 1950—1953 has been called “the Forgotten War” or “the Unknown War.” In the section on Military History at my local Barnes & Noble bookstore, there are many volumes on World War II and on the Vietnam War and even on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, but nothing at all on Korea. This is typical.

However, in many ways it was a turning point in world history after World War II. It solidified the pattern of the Cold War of “peripheral” wars but no World War III. It excused the re-armament of the United States, which, among other effects, was a cause of the post-war boom. And for Koreans, it froze in place the painful division of their ancient nation.

The Korean War can only be understood as a confluence of a number of distinct stresses. There was the inter-imperialist conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. The U.S. came out of the war as the dominant world power, militarily, politically, and economically. Stalin’s Russia was much weaker than the U.S. (which led to illusions on the left that it was more peaceful). But both powers ruled other countries and both had nuclear bombs, which threatened to exterminate humanity.

But this was not the only conflict. There was also the Korean class struggle of peasants and workers against the landlord class and the capitalists. There was the civil war between two Korean states, each seeking to unify the nation under its own rule. And there was the national liberation struggle of the Koreans, first against the Japanese and their collaborators and then against the U.S. and its collaborators.

History

The Japanese empire formally annexed Korea in 1910 and ruled it until the end of World War II. As colonial regimes went, it was especially brutal and cruel. Thousands of Koreans were forcibly moved about to serve in Japanese factories in Korea and Japan. Many were conscripted into the Japanese army. Korean women were forced to be “comfort women” for the Japanese army. The Korean language was banned in favor of Japanese.

Of course there was resistence in Korea. And many fled the peninsula to join the large community of Korean nationals who had long lived in Manchuria and northeastern China (at one time this had even been part of a Korean kingdom). There they formed guerrilla armies, in alliance with the Chinese Communists, to fight the Japanese. Indeed, whole “Chinese” Communist forces were made up of Koreans. Thousands of Koreans participated in the following Chinese civil war which overthrew Chiang Kai-shek.

Other Koreans collaborated with the Japanese. This included the landlord and capitalist classes and also those who became officers in the Japanese army and police force.

With the end of the World War, hundreds of “people’s committees” were formed throughout Korea. Most were leftist and nationalist, composed of local activists, but not dominated by the Communists (Workers Party). These began to create a unified government.

The U.S. military divided Korea at the 38th parallel, an imaginary line, for the Russians to take the surrender of the Japanese above the line and the U.S. below it. The Russians accepted this “temporary” division. The northern section had most of Korean industry at the time; the southern section had most of the population (at least 2/3rds). It was expected that a united government would be formed.

In the South, the U.S. military suppressed the people’s committees, banned worker and peasant unions, and repressed leftists. Instead it built a regime based on the Korean collaborators with the Japanese. To make this look good, it imported Syngman Rhee, a Korean nationalist who had spent decades in the U.S. He built an authoritarian state, the Republic of Korea, with “democratic” trappings (elections, etc.), but with murder of opponents and outlawry of the left.

In the North, the Russian army had brought in a set of former fighters in the Communist guerrilla forces. They were led by Kim Il Sung. They co-opted the people’s committees, and set up a Russian-style Stalinist dictatorship, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea. They broke up the old landlord class and took over capitalist industry. They did not lead the peasants and workers to power. Instead they built up a new, collectivized, bureaucratic ruling class and established the state as the agent of capital accumulation (state capitalism).

Stalin had less interest in Eastern Asia than he did in Eastern Europe, where he tightly controlled the puppet states. He had tried to hold back Mao from completely overthrowing the Chiang regime (which Mao did not forget). He had incomplete control over the North Koreans, who were genuine leaders of a national liberation struggle and who could play off China against Russia.

In October to November 1946, there were sizeable uprisings in the South against the Japanese-collaborationist, pro-landlord, regime. These were put down with great repession, including the use of the U.S. military. In April 1948 there was a large scale uprising on Cheju Island, which was also suppressed. In October 1948, mutinies and rebellions in the South led to guerrilla warfare
throughout large parts of South Korea, in some places lasting until the outbreak of the official war. (For details about the South Korean uprisings and guerrilla war, see the books by Cumings.)

The two Korean regimes each declared their intention to unify Korea under their state. They built up armies and posed them at the 38th parallel. Each engaged in small boundry crossings and provocations of the other. The U.S. deliberately held back some materiel from the Southern army, to keep it from being able to invade the North, as its government and army threatened to do.

In the event, it was the North which attacked the South, in June 1950. This was not under the orders of Stalin, but Kim Il Sung had apparently gotten permission from Stalin and at least consulted with the Chinese. However, it was his state’s own interests which drove him. (When it happened, the Soviet Union was actually boycotting the UN’s Security Council, so it was unable to veto the UN’s endorsement of the U.S. war.)

At first, the Korean People’s Army (the North) smashed through the South’s armed forces (the Republic of Korea Army), which collapsed, fled, or surrendered. The U.S. military did not do much better. The North drove the U.S. and the South Koreans back to the southeastern port of Pusan, taking 90 percent of Korea by August. Meanwhile they carried out land reform wherever they could and imposed their own rule.

But the U.S. and its allies (especially the British) immediately responded. Under the orders of President Truman, they flooded into Korea, officially under the flag of the UN (although the US was the main force and would have gone in without the UN). They built up in the south and then, in September, made an amphibious landing at Inchon Peninsula, behind North Korean lines. Now it was the turn of the Northern forces to scramble in retreat.

The U.S./UN could have driven the North back to the 38th parallel and declared victory—especially since the Chinese Communists threatened to intervene if the U.S. went into the North. But the U.S. and ROK forces did go into the North, in October, driving toward the Chinese border (the Yalu River). The Southern forces took over Northern cities and villages and began to expand their state.

The Chinese Communists saw this as an attack on their own revolution. In fact, there were forces in the U.S. that did see the Korean War as a stepping stone toward attacking China. The U.S. navy was dispatched to the Taiwan straits to prevent the Chinese Communists from finishing their own civil war by pursuing Chiang into Taiwan.

As they had promised, the Chinese poured in during October, and linked up with the North Korean forces. By the end of January, they had trapped the U.S. and South Korean military and drove them back down to around the original parallel. Now the two sides spent two years with a World War I-type stalemate, with trench warfare and back-and-forth small attacks.

Throughout the last years, the U.S. used its industrialized military power against its enemy—and against the Korean people. U.S. planes dropped bombs up and down the North and parts of the South. Incendiary bombs were used to burn down cities and napalm was widely used against the population. Every northern city and most towns were wiped out. Finally the U.S. bombed the two main irrigation dams of the North, causing gigantic flooding and loss of life. Meanwhile the U.S. and the South treated refugees from the war as enemies and committed a series of massacres.

There was also very serious discussion within the U.S. government about possibly using nuclear bombs in Korea or China. There were airplane flights over North Korea to practice for possible atomic bomb dropping. Thankfully, the U.S. decided against it each time. Tensions within the U.S. government over the conduct of the unpopular war rose so high, that President Truman had to fire his leading general, Douglas MacArthur, for advocating nuclear bombing and the expansion of the war into China.

After two years of negotiations, in July 1953, the war ended in an armistice, which is to say that officially it never ended (and the South never signed it). There had been misjudgments on all sides. The North had been sure that the U.S. would not back up the South in a big way. The U.S. had been sure that the Chinese would not come in if the U.S. went into the North. After three years of war the peninsula was devastated, more than 3 million Koreans were dead, and millions of refugees wandered across the blasted landscape. Yet the two sides were back where they had started (the Demilitarized Zone being pretty close to the 38th parallel).

Nearly 35 thousand U.S. soldiers had died. The war had become very unpopular and President Truman’s support was at an all-time low; he decided not to run again. Unlike the later Vietnam war, there was no peace movement, especially given the rise in anti-communist hysteria at the time. Instead, the Republican “Ike” Eisenhauer was elected U.S. president on an implied promise to end the war.

The Response of the Left

Leftists in the U.S., Western Europe, and elsewhere had one of three opinions:

(1) Liberals and reform socialists (social democrats) generally supported the U.S. side. They were impressed by the argument that the North Koreans had started the war (untrue and meaningless) by crossing an international border (not true). They bought into the claim that this was not U.S. aggression but a UN “police action” (when the U.S. was actually imposing its will on a colonized nation, against the wishes of a majority of its people, and using the UN as a cover). This was part of the liberal/social democratic left’s support for Western imperialism.

(2) Some leftists (socialists and liberals) supported the Communist side of the war. They saw the Soviet Union, Maoist China, and North Korea as “socialist” and progressive. The orthodox Trotskyists saw these countries as ruled by “workers’ states” (“degenerated” or “deformed”) which should be defended against capitalism. Actually they were state-capitalist dictatorships which the workers had no control over but which treated the workers similarly to the way Western capitalism did.

They also saw the Korean War as a war of national liberation against the main imperialist power, the United States. They saw it as part of the world-wide revolution against colonialism and imperialism. This included the Chinese revolution (including the Chinese intervention in Korea), the struggle for independence of India, the national struggles in Africa and the Middle East, and efforts of Latin American countries to assert themselves.

This part of their analysis had a lot of truth to it. But the defeat of the working class in Europe and the U.S. put limits on these liberation struggles. They were unable to go beyond Stalinist or bourgeois nationalist programs—without the program of internationalist working class revolution. While they made some improvements in the lives of ordinary people, they could not break out of subordination to the world capitalist system (which included Russian state capitalism). For this reason, among others, it was a dangerous mistake to idealize the nationalist/Stalinist governments of these states. This was true no matter how much it was necessary to be in solidarity with their people against imperialism.

(3) A few leftists rejected both Stalinism and Western capitalism. This included most anarchists as well as dissident Trotskyists, radical pacifists, and a few others. These rejected both sides in the Korean War. Holding this view, Natalia Sedova, Trotsky’s widow, resigned from the Trotskyist Fourth International (see Sedova Trotsky, 1951).

These militants were correct to oppose the U.S. side of the war, to oppose the South Korean regime of collaborators with the Japanese and the U.S., and to reject the fraud of the UN police action. They were right to demand an immediate end to the war and the withdrawal of the U.S. troops.

They were also undoubtedly right to reject the analysis of the Communist states, including North Korea, as socialist or working class or progressive. These were reactionary, oppressive, state-capitalist, governments, allied with the imperialist state of the Soviet Union.

However, in my opinion, such leftists tended to overlook the degree of independence of North Korera and China, seeing them as puppets of Stalin’s imperialism (which they were not). They underestimated the extent to which North Korea and China were motivated by a genuine desire to be free from imperialism, a desire supported by their people. (The leftists also had a reasonable fear of the Korean War setting off World War III.) While the anarchists and others were right to not support the Communist Party dictatorships, they should have expressed solidarity with the oppressed people of Korea who wanted to be united and free of Japanese and U.S. imperialism and its stooges.

This is a discussion of broad positions. There is a history of Korean anarchists and libertarian socialists. I am not making tactical suggestions of what Korean anarchists should have done, before or during the Korean War, if any had survived the Japanese and the Stalinists. Clearly the pro-Western forces and the Stalinist-nationalists did an awful job between them in the destruction caused by the Korean War. Since the war, things have changed in significant ways in Korea (as in the rest of the world). There is now a chance for a better politics which can really end national division, capitalist (and state-capitalist) exploitation, and imperialist domination, in Korea and everywhere else.


Recommended Readings on the Korean War

Cumings, Bruce (2005). Korea’s Place in the Sun; A Modern History (updated edition). NY: Norton.
Cumings, Bruce (2010). The Korean War; A History. NY: Modern Library.
Halberstam, David (2007). The Coldest Winter; America and the Korean War. NY: Hyperion.
Halliday, Jon, & Cumings, Bruce (1988). Korea: The Unknown War. NY: Pantheon.
Sedova Trotsky, Natalia (1951). Resignation from the Fourth International. http://www.marxists.org/archive/sedova-natalia/1951/05/...9.htm

*written for www.Anarkismo.net

author by Pan Arab Nasseristpublication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 05:35author email will.colwell at gmail dot comauthor address author phone Report this post to the editors

one position forgotten by the author was the important views by Malcolm X. Malcolm X did not care what the economic status of People's Korea was. He understood the Korea War as a struggle by fellow people of color against white supremacy. It did not matter what the Koreans decided as long as THEY decided. Independence starts with home-rule, not puppet regimes, like in Iraq, Palestine, Afghanistan, Egypt, Columbia, Honduras, and South Yemen today. In'shallah, we will be free.

author by Son of a Korean War MIA - The National Alliance of Familiespublication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 09:26author email wsowlessr at aol dot comauthor address author phone Report this post to the editors

There is a fine book written by Mr. Mark Sauter, CBS News Investigative Reporter, about the USG cover up of over 8200 American soldiers from the Korean War who are still MIA in North Korea and many of whom were kept by the communist Chinese and many others carted off to the gulags of the USSR. Read it to get an unbiased view of the aftermath of the Korean War: "Soldiers of Misfortune" by Mark Sauter and James Sanders.

author by Waynepublication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:54author address author phone Report this post to the editors

To Pan African Nasserist: It is true that Malcolm X strongly and correctly identified with the international anti-imperialist revolutions after World War II, including the popular side of the Korean War. Unfortunatley he did not fully understand the reactionary, oppressive, policies of the various bourgeois nationalist and (in Korea and China) state-capitalist leaderships, who were to cause such sufferring for their people. Such leaders were unable to overthrow world imperialism, precisely because they were not breaking with capitalism in all its forms. See my essay on "Malcolm X and Anarchism." http://www.anarkismo.net/article/15647

To Son of a Korean War Vet MIA: I have not read the book by Sauter, but I am sure that many U.S. troops were M.I.A. from the Korean War--that is, they were missing during and after this chaotic war. However, I find it hard to believe that the North Koreans, Chinese Communists, and Russians are still keeping live U.S. soldiers, against their will. As you can tell from my essay, I do not think very well about the Stalinist governments, but what would be the point for them in doing this? As we see with the similar MIA issue in relation to the Vietnam War, this issue is being used to make it look as if the U.S. was the victim rather than the aggressor and criminal.

author by Waynepublication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 12:02author address author phone Report this post to the editors

The following 2 comments were received by me off-line. I will reprint them withoiut giving the identities of the writers:

(1) Wayne, do you have a citation from any contemporary anarchist press on:

"While the anarchists and others were right to not support the
Communist Party dictatorships, they should have expressed solidarity
with the oppressed people of Korea who wanted to be united and free of
Japanese and U.S. imperialism and its stooges."

It has always been my understanding that, certainly, the Korean
Anarchist Federation took an anti-imperialist point of view. I've not
seen any anarchist newspapers from that time period to know what was
said in our press.

Those interested in stuff on the Korean anarchist movement and
libertarian and anarchist ideas/movements in Asia in general should
check out the historical record site of Libro International:
http://www.negations.net/libero/default.htm Libro International was
a small irregular publication out of Japan. Pretty cool stuff.

(2) 60 years later, it's hard to imagine the Korean war was a struggle of the North Korean "people against imperialism". Have you painted the North Korean side too favorably? Beyond the USSR's hand in China and North Korea, all three countries had a technocratic Communist Party ruling class.

Beyond these points the article lacks context of struggle in the US at the time. Had a libertarian communist platformist group been at the time how would they have related to the Korean war? Perhaps they would have been involved in the nascent anti-war/anti-draft movement. What other struggle were raging tin the US between 1950 and 1953? Unfortunately this context is missing from the article.

author by Waynepublication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 12:27author address author phone Report this post to the editors

This is the response I made to the previous comments:

My essay was written as a background essay for a collection of essays on Korea and anarchism, being brought together by Jose Antonio G. It was supposed to only cover the Korean War as such. Therefore it does not discuss all sorts of topics, including the fascinating history of Korean anarchism (such as the anti-Japanese anarchist guerrilla region in Manchuria, which was eventually wiped out between the Japanese army and the Stalinists) or the anti-imperialist program of the Korean anarchists (which supported national liberation for Korea, while opposing nationalist and pro-capitalist programs) or the general events in the world in this period (which I brushed on in passing, such as the Chinese revolution, the Vietnamese national struggle, etc.).

It is dangerous to generalize from our current experience of Korea to the situation 60 years ago. Now the Northern regime is notorious for its oppression while the Southern regime is a bourgeois democracy. But back then, things had not quite jelled. South Korea was an oppressive dictatorship (and remained for for decades) run by former collaborators with the Japanerse, while the North had the popular prestige of being led by genuine fighters against Japanese imperialism.

However, I did *not* portray the war as one of "North Korean people against imperialism." I wrote that there were various aspects to the war, including a civil war between two dictatorial states, a Cold War inter-imperialist conflict, and *also* an anti-imperialist struggle of the Korean people (including southern guerrillas) against U.S. imperialism. These were all mixed together. Due to the last factor, I think that revolutionary anarchists should have been in solidarity with the "Korean people,* but not have given any support--or spread any illusions in--the North Korean regime. (I thought this was what I wrote.)

As mentioned, there was much antiwar sentiment in the U.S. at the time, but it was channeled into support for the Republicans, to end the war. Anticommunism was widespread and what there was of the U.S. left was either anticommunist liberals or remnants of the Communist Party. There were also radical pacifists and a very small number of anarchists, Wobblies, dissident Trotskyists, and libertarian Marxists around, but their impact was still minimal,until the beginning of the civil rights movement in the mid-fifties.

author by José Antonio Gutiérrez D.publication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 16:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Thanks Wayne for having written this essay which is much welcome and much needed to shed some light on the reality of what happened in Korea 60 years ago, which still has important repercussions. Today there's an awful lot of misconceptions of the nature of the partition, on the nature of the North Korean and the South Korean regimes respectively, and most US citizens would ignore that the US still has around 40,000 marines in the border with North Korea! Most people would also ignore that during the '90s in two occasions the US discussed to do pre-emtpive was (Iraq style) against North Korea (1994 and 1998) and the only reason why they were not carried was because of the high number of casualties they expected (unlike Iraq). And that the threat of nuclear strikes has been a constant against North Korea as well. All these things need to be known to understand what's going on in Korea.

In relation to the North Korean regime, to understand it, it is important to know its origins, as Wayne was rightly saying, in the genuine guerrilla experience of the Anti-Japanese figfhters in the '30s, how its origins were really complex (including an alliance of different religious and political groups -one of the reasons why North Korea dos NOT have a Communist Party) and how the State was founded on the basis of the People's Committees in a way not too different as how the Bolshevik State was created out of the Soviets. Obviously, this means that North Korea was neither a simple Soviet satellite and gives some insights on how the regime did not collapse in 1990 and why it can keep going on in the middle of enormous isolation and economic difficulties.

I quite like the definition of North Korea given by Bruce Cumings, a leading expert on Korean issues who can hardly be labeled a left winger or a Kim dynasty apologist, in a highly recommendable and enjoyable book. Talking about the reality of NK being a garrison State, he adds:

"There is another way of thinking about this country: as a small, Third World, postcolonial nation that has been gravely wounded, first by forty years of Japanese colonialism and then by another sixty years of national division and war, and that is deeply insecure, threatened by the world around it. And so it projects a fearsome image." (North Korea, Another Country, The New Press, 2004, p.151)

ps. The series of articles on Korea is to be published in Spanish (consisting of a number of articles from Libero, plues other other things we have had translated into Spanish for the first time).

author by Yolpublication date Sun Oct 31, 2010 17:26author address author phone Report this post to the editors

I am Korean friendly of anarchism. People making comment suggest anarchist were exterminated by Stalinist, but my knowledge suggest anarchist and communist were two exterminated by Japanese. But communist run to Russia, anarchist could not go nowhere.

author by mitch - per. cappublication date Mon Nov 01, 2010 00:35author email syndicalistnyc at gmail dot comauthor address author phone Report this post to the editors

Wayne, do you have a citation from any contemporary anarchist press on:

"While the anarchists and others were right to not support the Communist Party dictatorships, they should have expressed solidarity with the oppressed people of Korea who wanted to be united and free of
Japanese and U.S. imperialism and its stooges."

As a seasoned writer, I thought you would've referred to some text, some non-Korean anarchist statement from that period to back up your position. You may be right on what the ultimate a majority position/perspective may have been, but it would be useful to have a quote or reference citation. Otherwise it can be read as both an "over reach" or you simply stating your own view in a vacume.

It has always been my understanding that, certainly, the Korean Anarchist Federation took an anti-imperialist point of view. I've not seen any anarchist newspapers from that time period to know what was
said in our press.

Just as a further historical side note. The period in question was a period of profound attacks by the State and Corportations on all aspects of American radicalism and against radicalism in general.
It was the McCarthy period, everyone on the left and left labor was basically in retreat or barely holding the line. Internationally, the anarchist movement was but a mere shadow of itself due to decades of repression and war. So this is the context in which "we" existed.

Those interested in stuff on the Korean anarchist movement and libertarian and anarchist ideas/movements in Asia in general should check out the historical record site of Libro International http://www.negations.net/libero/default.htm Libro International wasa small irregular publication out of Japan. Pretty cool stuff.

author by Waynepublication date Mon Nov 01, 2010 04:14author address author phone Report this post to the editors

For further information on the history of anarchism in Korea (in English), see:

The Korean Anarchist Movement
http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/ANARCHIST_ARCHIVES/worldwide....html

Schmidt & van der Walt (2009). "Black Flame" vol. 1. Pp. 285--290.

Korea--History of anarchism up to the present
http://www.ainfos.ca/en/ainfos23840.html

author by Phébus - UCL - Personnal capacitypublication date Mon Nov 08, 2010 11:04author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Someone asked Wayne "Had a libertarian communist platformist group been at the time how would they have related to the Korean war? Perhaps they would have been involved in the nascent anti-war/anti-draft movement."

I dont know about the US but I do know that there was a few platformist groups around elsewhere during those years. One of them was rather large and localised in France. If we look at how they related to the national liberation relating to their own imperialism, my guess is that a US platformist group would have had a position of critical support for the national liberation.

In France, the libertarian communists opposed both the Indochine (Vietnam-Laos-Cambodge) and Algerian Wars. They where also involved in the anti-NATO forces and where puting forward a line of a "third camp" (i.e. Neighter Washington, nor Moscow). They where deeply involved in anti-militarist activity [wich involved freedom roads for youth fleeing the military service) and peace movement. They build coalition with small like minded political forces (trotskyist mainly but also dissident communists). And, in the case of Algeria, helped the insurgency the best they could (providing meeting space, human ressources to act as courrier, smugling small arms). Eventually, however, they where smashed by the repression (that was helped by a strange self-destruction pattern too). I guess the same would have happened to a US based group.

author by Waynepublication date Mon Nov 15, 2010 05:56author address author phone Report this post to the editors

As Phebus writes, I believe that a U.S. anarchist group in this period should have acted similarly to the (general) activities of French platformists during the Algerian war (including Daniel Guerin). That is, to oppose "their" imperialist state's military aggression, to be in solidarity with the people of the oppressed nation and their right to resist imperialism, withut endorsing the nationalist (or Stalinist) leaderships.

Whether such a anarchist force would have been "smashed" is hard to say. It would have faced the McCarthyite anti-communist repression of the 50s, the deradicalizing post-WWII prosperity, and the attractiveness (to rebellious young leftists) of Third World nationalism and revolutionary Stalinism fighting imperialism (China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba). Living through the later part of the period (the 60s and 70s), I can tell you that all this was not easy for libertarian socialists to deal with.

author by Ilan S. - AAtW; ainfos; Matzpenpublication date Wed Nov 24, 2010 21:13author email ilan at shalif dot comauthor address Tel Avivauthor phone Report this post to the editors

"....That is, to oppose "their" imperialist state's military aggression, to be in solidarity with the people of the oppressed nation and their right to resist imperialism, withut endorsing the nationalist (or Stalinist) leaderships. "

It is the same position the antiauthoritarian anticapitalist Matzpen and the Israeli anarchists hold towards the Israeli naZionist settler colonialist project and the 1948 - 1967 occupations and on going suppression and transfer on one side and resistance of the Palestinian side.

We oppose the Israeli side and even join the grass root Palestinian activists in the struggle... with out support of the nationalist solutions, organizations, and illusions.

author by Waynepublication date Fri Nov 26, 2010 07:31author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Precisely.

author by Waynepublication date Sat Nov 27, 2010 06:54author address author phone Report this post to the editors

In the light of recent events, threatening another Korean War, readers may be interested in my previous essay, "North Korea and the Threat of Nuclear War."
http://www.anarkismo.net/article/3991

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