I don't want to extend this thread here but the WSWS has gone on a campaign to
defend Polanski with this entry being the most strident in their arsenal:
The sordid coalition pursuing filmmaker Roman Polanski -- By David Walsh
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/oct2009/pola-o08.shtml

I guess I shouldn't ever be surprized at what the WSWS comes up with in way of
argument but this rant-- snippets below -- by Walsh is rachet plus.

The complication is that the real scandal is that most rapists -- let alone most
pedophiles (go ask the Catholic Church )-- go no where near a jail whether
their surname is Polanski or Smith or Senator Bob Collins. Roman is, in effect,
simply securing the freedom most rapists enjoy.

As I pointed out before on this list:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/GreenLeft_discussion/message/64080

"In Australia, the conviction rate in rape trials is 35 per cent (
compared however with over 70 per cent in all other criminal matters).In
Australia legal proceedings begin in only a fifth of cases investigated and 40
per cent of cases that go to court are withdrawn."

The conviction rate in England and Wales for rape has fallen
to 6.5 per cent! Scotland has an even lower conviction rate at only 2.9 per
cent.This is despite that the proportion of false allegations was "extremely
low" — ranging from 2 per cent to 9 per cent.

But this forensic fact is totally lost on the WSWS site's Walsh, who writes such
twaddle as:

" We are seeing before our eyes, so to speak, the movement of an entire layer of
the upper-middle class to the right. There are those in the circles in and
around Salon, the Nation and the rest of the liberal media who are merely
stupid, to be frank, and easily duped. But there are others who are well aware
of what is going on. They welcome the chance to cement relations with
reactionary elements.

"Remarkably, the anti-Polanski campaign has become yet another opportunity for
liberal and ex-left elements to accommodate themselves to the right and return
to the respectable fold.

"In some quarters the campaign against Polanski is given a "left" twist. Some
of the letter writers to the WSWS uncritically echo these arguments...." [Oh
those stupid, duped, feminist-loving fools who read WSWS!]

"In the past, "feminist liberals" would have been embarrassed by the confluence
of their opinions with those of the extreme right, and would perhaps have
disavowed their newfound allies. Now they revel in the relationship."

But the WSWS POV has a terrible logic to it . Its' almost textbook schema stuff.

Of course there are political complications with urging the determined pursuit
of any one and with any demand that they serve time. The Pedophile frenzy much
loved by politicians and tabloid journalists is an example of how that plays out
as it is indeed a law and order stalking horse --a sort of knee jerk perenial
sure to win support. But what WSWS does in its rush to rage against the
capitalist state is conveniently forget that a crime, in anyone's lexicon, was
committed -- although Walsh chooses to not use that term preferring instead to
call it a "sad affair" .

I hate to say this, but there is a undercurrent within the Marxist left, with
strong workerist preferences, to no longer even play lip service to feminism as
it did in the seventies and eighties.
Traditionally some currents -- like the WSWS but there were others-- opposed the
feminist movement as liberal middle class protest that served only to divide the
working class by gender.

If you check back you'll get the measure of its rages around the Tommy Sheridan
fracas in the SSP. And in each instance the main argument will usually rest on

(a) the question of the class divide and the unity of the working class
(b) the autocratic power of the bourgeois state

Anything else cannot mitigate these overriding imperatives.


dave riley